How to stop feeding everyone ultra-processed food
The role of supply chains
A supply chain invariably starts with government. Government instigates, directs, often funds and then regulates in order to protect the public, as each and every chain rolls out its products and services.
Everything we do in our lives has a supply chain connection. Good, bad or indifferent, how we go about our everyday tasks has a supply chain link keeping it and us together.
In a food context, supply chains are relied upon to feed, water and, most importantly, keep us well. Yet we are in the midst of a damning collection of social ills, including obesity, hunger and increased risk of cancers, indicating that our current food supply chain is failing. It is in need of government intervention to re-set and re-direct it towards a suitable course, ready to promote and protect public health.
In the context of this report, our interests are the supply chains that feed our politicians, older people, those ill in hospital, children in schools, food aid recipients and the wider public shopping and eating from supermarkets.
We sit in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis that is the worst since Napoleonic times, creating a vulnerable public at large, requiring those who have the influence to protect and improve to do just that. But, at the time of writing, the adjustments necessary to support affordable healthier living are not apparent and we have food supply chains which are moving within a ‘business as usual’ model, extracting profits and leaving behind very little in the way of social value.
Understanding fully the shareholder value paradigm in which the private sector operates –and the restrictions on public contracts — means much more can be achieved if those involved deem it important to do so. Sat alongside it is the operation of the public sector supply model and, here too, true social value still remains little more than an aspiration.
Tens of millions of pounds are leaving the public space every year, without adding any benefit at all to improving people’s lives — in fact, the money is being spent on food doing exactly the opposite.
Welsh Primary School example
272,000 primary school children @ £2.80 per meal x 195 days
= £125m budget to feed the children a school meal
x 10% waste = £12m passing into the waste stream
x 35% of the budget = £43m (purchasing UPF)
* Estimated from publicly-available information
Economic and geopolitical shocks have shown just how fragile our food infrastructure is in recent years, with empty supermarket shelves the ubiquitous face of larger supply chain issues. Across the UK, domestically, just four supermarkets– Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Aldi — control 66% of the market. In the financial year to 2022, the three largest retailers made a collective £3.2bn profit. Food inflation over the last year has seen Sainsbury’s and Tesco return their biggest underlying profits since 2014. This indicates how even in times of real fiscal pressures, ‘Big Food’ can find a way to achieve significant benefit –albeit for itself.
Yet in the wider public realm, major social problems still exist. North Wales suffers from food deserts, where communities cannot buy fresh, reasonably-priced, good food. This means entire communities have no route to good eating habits, as they are unable to shop like most of us do — or simply cannot afford to buy healthier food. This exclusion from being able to be a consumer of goods is a supply chain problem — a problem not looked at by supermarkets because solving the problem is not as profitable as they would require. Change and the provision of a new type of supply chain based on social benefit, could certainly offer options.
Supply chain best practice sees quality defined as ‘locally-sourced’ food. Yet a number of key suppliers in Wales have moved away from fresh fruit and veg, because of an intersection of the cost-of-living crisis, Brexit, Covid and a lack of growing capacity makes it unprofitable. And, as with supermarkets, making money remains the primary objective in the local supply chain, well above any concerns for food quality and/or social/environmental value. If, however, quality and social value were to become equal, it could and would contribute to Welsh policy priorities including social value, decarbonisation, foundational economy and the Well-being of Future Generations Act.
We recognise the Welsh Government’s Programme for Government 2021 to 2026 and Co-operationAgreement commit Wales to developing a Community Food Strategy (CFS). Whilst this is vital, and encourages the production and supply of locally-sourced food in Wales, it will take some years to become embedded and make a significant difference to the Welsh supply chain. Action to remove UPF must be taken simultaneously, enabling us to feed people well as increased quantities of locally-sourced food become available.
The current public food supply chain is based around the provision of cheaper-to-market ultra-processed foods and the procurement models that determine this chain are designed to maintain the same system. Fresh food continues to be costed out of public supply, because it is deemed to be too expensive and the private sector, which is the pivotal link, is heavily invested in the supply of the ultra-processed alternatives. As ProfessorKevin Morgan points out, whilst the Welsh public sector procurement review Better Value Wales had a number of progressive outcomes, it also framed procurement in terms of cost-cutting — rather than value-creating — assuming that major savings could be secured if the public sector consistently achieved lower quartile prices. Unfortunately, 22 years on, these circumstances largely still remain and have no basis in protecting people’s health. In his latest report, Values for Money: public sector food procurement in Wales, Morgan makes the point that “although food accounts for barely 1% of the £7 billion that public bodies in Wales spend annually in procuring goods, services and works, its social significance vastly outweighs its financial status.” But is this significance being realised?
To focus on a particular problem needing a solution:the public sector food supply chain is immersed in platitudinal good faith messages and false claims about supplying healthy food via school food, for example. We see and hear it all the time — and it’s simply not true. New interventions are necessary, if real change is to come into place.
Foundational Economy Research from 2021 recommended increasing the price/ quality weightings in public sector food tenders. Quality weightings remain as low as 20% in some current contracts –it recommends moving to a 50% quality weighting in new contracts — but these recommendations are still in the inbox, begging the question ‘why?’ 50% may seem high, so an intervention that would make a significant difference is the use of a weighting focused on quality and social value as the key drivers = 30% cost, 45% quality and 25% social value.
In May 2023, Royal Assent was granted to the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023, establishing a legal foundation for social partnership in Wales. This act mandates contracting authorities to ensure socially responsible outcomes when procuring. Additionally, it requires public entities to generate yearly procurement reports that detail progress towards the objectives in the Well-being of Future Generations Act.
If this is acted upon, there are real opportunities to improve the school food model, for example. Jobs would be protected, it could feed all children well and be able to generate wider benefits for local communities — but it will require additional capacity to deliver and certainly require a new competitive/commercial edge.
If we are serious about change and about looking after the environment for the benefit of the youngest amongst us, as with other sectors, the food ‘industry’ needs to recognise the ‘whole-life’ cost of food, rather than just its low-cost and relationship with profit. The health and environmental implications of ultra-processed food are too severe to ignore and from the top down(government), onto dining tables everywhere, the change necessary to feed people well requires inspired leadership. A leadership willing to plan for at least a five- year programme of improvement, including procurement, the quality of the food sold into the public system and the quality of the food served in our public institutions.
At Well-Fed we have dedicated years to developing fresh healthier meals for children/ young people and for our older communities. All of these meals can be offered within existing public sector budgets, surpass nutritional standards and do so having removed ultra-processed products from every main meal. If we can do this, every other supplier and everyone serving meals to those who require them, can do the same.
Our process includes rethinking current systems of delivery and starting by feeding people good food. It is a position that still has a close eye on profit and job creation, but we never lose sight of the health of the child or person we want to feed. And we do this in constant dialogue with our suppliers, working with them to provide us with only the products that will help us sell and serve the healthiest, best tasting food possible.
It is a process that has also highlighted a number of gaps in school catering. Gaps which have opened up vulnerabilities in schools being able to maintain competent staff levels, and the offer of good food as standard. School food has become so reliant on UPF to function that many school cooks have lost the ability to prepare meals from scratch and in the volumes able to cope with important interventions such as the Universal Rollout of Primary School Meals. Without changes to the current supply of meals to children, much of the benefit, which could be achieved, will be lost to practice outdated in both delivery and product.
Trading from Wales and on the border of England, we are committed to sourcing food from a 50km radius of our kitchen and often look across the border for solutions not available in Wales — this is good practice. The driver of what is considered ‘good quality’ is problematic for a number of reasons.
Returning to the work of Professor Kevin Morgan, he highlights the disconnect between supply and demand for local produce, with suppliers unable to fulfil an increased demand for local produce, especially in sectors like horticulture. He points to Carmarthenshire Public Services Board’s study of suppliers to the Welsh “public plate”, finding that just 6% of 261 products/ ingredients used in schools in Wales have a Welsh provenance.
“Public sector demand and local supply are almost completely out of tune,” it concluded (Wright and Cook, 2021). The study found that, while chicken, pork — and, to a lesser extent, turkey — dominate meat served on the public plate, lamb and beef dominate Welsh agriculture. We are working to put the best food at the best price on the plates of everyone who wants to eat it. If it is Welsh — great. But if it comes from England, for example, then –as already noted — if it feeds people well, this is best practice.
What we do already enables greater use of local seasonal produce across our menus. Creating menus driven by choices made by our customers — children and adults alike — means our food is relevant to what people want to eat. It also means our supply chain plays a big part in being relevant too.
The removal of ultra-processed food requires systemic change. A dogged determination from all levers of Government is needed to overcome the layers of vested interests that look to keep the current supply programme as it is.
It’s time a calculation was made of, not to the ‘true cost of poor food’ and the system moved away from the dominant direction of efficiencies everywhere. The school food system is delivered through a number of these efficiencies — of supply, service and profit. None of this reflects well on the protection of children’s health and their wellbeing, as they sit innocently at a school dinner table. As Adrienne Butler points out, when an issue is serious, ‘efficiency should be a priority difficult to defend’ — and she is right.
In school food, children’s health through good food– as opposed to just feeding them — should be the focus, not the savings that can be made at their expense. Efficiency in children’s health pushes the problem onto much bigger health costs for the state, as children become the sick adults we increasingly see across public health channels.
School food as a good food supply chain example
All sectors have an important role to play if the supply chain is to function well. However, our concern is making sure services such as school food remain beneficial to public. Private sector school food providers look to achieve margins of up to 45%+ gross profit. As a social business, we operate around the 31% mark — we leave you, as the reader, to assess where the difference ends up. They operate to make profit and, within their model, it’s right that they do so.
Public benefit models take a different stance and in doing so achieve so much more if the playing field we operate on is fair. It must be shaped to accommodate quality and health, equal to the lowest cost and profit-drivers procurement continues to favour.
Volume drives school meal contracts, which makes them attractive to the private sector. In Wales, school food is still dominated by the public sector but, as the scale increases, the private sector is now taking an active interest.
The legislation provides for free school meals — making the responsibility incumbent on suppliers to make sure that the meals are providing for children in every location. As it stands, the policy places all of the power in the hands of the suppliers, protected by nutritional standards which, in their current form, do little for the health of the child. With so much ultra-processed food in the supply chain, there is little emphasis on the quality of the food provided to the ‘eaters’ (the children). This lack of true measurement and quality is much more apparent in smaller ‘satellite’ schools — those with fewer children. There is a two-tier approach in school food, with many satellite schools receiving inferior meal services — it doesn’t have to be this way.
So, how do we protect school food for public good?
We must not overstate the significance of the commitment to free school meals for all primary school children by September 2024, which creates an opportunity to better serve our communities and ensure the wellbeing of our children and young people. Done well, it is an approach that could drive environmental, economic, social and major nutritional benefits for children. Done not so well, the health of many of the children will be overlooked in acts of expediency and profit making.
School food operators must signup to feeding children food that is not detrimental to their lives. If this route is chosen by most school food operators, because of the scale, it opens up the market to better food across the supply chain. And, as this food becomes accessible in increased quantities, so the price reduces to make it affordable in all cases. Interestingly, the same system is in operation right now, but focused on the supply of food that is bad for children’s health. UPF makes up about 75% of the supply into schools, making it cheaper and profitable to supply. It is therefore reasonable to apply the same rules to the change required to make all school food, good food.
This is a change that can be made now and it is difficult to understand the reasons for any negative reaction to a change so positive for children’s health and wellbeing.
The public sector must not be allowed to hold onto school food contracts simply because they are deemed to be better in public hands — this sort of thought process leads to children not getting the best deal. What is required is the presentation of a compelling business case — compelling to schools, compelling to children and compelling to parents –who want to see the health of their children taken care of.
The private sector will provide a compelling case using whatever conditions the market dictates, competing on price and competing on standards in order to win customers. However, if those conditions change and require too much profit-threatening resource, they will leave the marketplace or simply not bid to join. This is the gap public/ social sector can move into, creating such a compelling case that it fends off competitors by feeding children well at all times and using its delivery infrastructure to offer a social impact+ programme to wrap around all children in all schools. Then is up to the providers to complete and deserve their status as a school food provider. Is it too strong to say ultra-processed food is poisoning children?
Is it too strong to say that UPFs will be the cause for many children to die as they grow older? We don’t think so. Yet we insist on providing this food to unsuspecting children, as if it is good for them. This is a practice that must stop and could stop overnight, if the Government decided enough is enough and legislated towards a good food future for children and anyone in receipt of a meal offered via the public sector.
In this space, we see a socially compelling business case including:
- A price match of any incumbent supplier
- Children only ever eating UPF-free meals
- Satellite schools receiving the same quality of service as the feeder schools
- Guaranteed standardisation of the quality of meals across all schools
- Nutrition focused on the individual eater, rather than the entire school cohort•
- No child going hungry in school (ever)
- Parents being able to purchase take home meals at prices they can always afford, and;
- No job losses in schools
All of this can be done, and all of this can be afforded within the current school food contracts, but change and improvement will require the rules of procurement to change also. Government must instruct that greater public value becomes integral to all contract awards = 25% of the value of the contract.
If this condition is created, then the public sector will only have itself to blame if it loses contracts. And in turn, the private sector should be congratulated because they will have created a compelling business case for keeping children well fed, fit and active.
