Luton Public Health
Across two years we supported Luton Public Health, delivering strategic, communications and on the ground support for five projects related to the food environment.
TuckIN
The launch, promotion and establishment of the TuckIN scheme for food outlets was a priority.
The project was launched in September 2018 with good coverage on the TV - the BBC news (BBC East) did a lengthy feature on the 28th September.
At the end of March 2019, we had engaged with 149 businesses, successfully signed up 52 businesses, and 47 had signed Pledges and received resources for their restaurant / takeaway.
Changing oil to healthier rapeseed and sunflower oil was the only mandatory requirement for participation in the scheme. 25 outlets switched from vegetable oil to either healthier Rapeseed or sunflower oil and 10 committed to continuing to using rapeseed or sunflower oil. Other pledges made were:
-
36 out of 50 businesses made 41 pledges in relation to reducing / changing fat
-
24 out of 50 businesses made 26 pledges in relation to reducing salt
-
29 out of 50 businesses made 31 pledges in relation to reducing sugar
-
18 out of 50 businesses made 21 pledges in relation to portion size
-
36 out of 50 businesses made 46 pledges to nudge their customers towards healthier choices.
As an estimate, the number of meals impacted by the scheme annually was over 1.9 million (conservatively based on 6 days a week service). We carried out three TuckIN community evaluation on street surveys. Results showed across the period of the project there was a 13% decrease in those stating that they rarely or never ate a balanced diet; a 30% increase in people saying they’d heard of TuckIN; and a 21% increase in members of the public saying they were aware of work that Luton Council were doing to support local businesses to improve food choices and offer healthier options.
Other Luton Public Health projects we supported included:
Refill - Increasing access to water and reducing single use plastic.
We visited 43 businesses on 58 occasions to promote the refill scheme; signing up 17 businesses.
Free to Feed – Supporting and normalizing breast feeding by encouraging restaurants, pubs and venues to welcome breast-feeding mothers.
We signed up 22 businesses to the ‘Free to Feed’ Scheme, exceeding our recruitment target of 20 businesses.
Healthy Start – encouraging food outlets to participate in the Healthy Start scheme which supports pregnant mums and parents with children under 4 to access milk and fresh veg.
We re-engaged 38 out of the 52 previously involved retailers (2 of which were no longer operating). We also recruited 21 new retailers, exceeding the ‘new recruit’ target of 20 businesses.
Edible Luton – Edible Luton is all about creating and celebrating growing spaces around the town.
We recruited at least 60 new adult volunteers to the project, established three new growing spaces, supported six new spaces, and supported 12 existing growing spaces. We also submitted four bids for additional funding.