 very warm welcome to the British Library food season, which is generously supported by KitchenAid. My name is Angela Clutton, I have the huge pleasure of being the guest director of the food season, working with Polly Russell, who founded the food season four years ago and is its curator. We have a very special event today, not just because it's a final event of this year's food season, but because it's a collaboration with a brilliant youth activist organisation, Bite Back 2030. You're about to watch a film that Bite Back made with us, focusing on issues around youth obesity and our food environment. That film is going to be followed by discussion of these issues and looking ahead to possible solutions. A little housekeeping before we get started. There are tabs on screen where you can give feedback on the event or perhaps make a donation to support the work of the British Library. This event is pre-recorded, so you can't leave a question for our panel, but underneath this video, you should find social media links so you can carry on the conversation there. Now though, let's turn to Bite Back 2030 and here's Jamie Oliver to tell you more. Hi, guys, what can I tell you about Bite Back? Well, first up, Bite Back is a proper youth-led movement. There's no adults telling kids what to do. It's the other way around. We founded it because we've got a massive health issue in the UK. One in three children leave primary school, overweight or with obesity. And if you live in a disadvantaged area, you're twice as likely to be affected. But we believe that we can fix things through putting child health back at the centre of the food system. So what does that actually look like in reality? Well, we have to make sure that all young people, wherever they live, can find and afford healthy, nutritious food. That means taking junk food out of the spotlight and using the power of marketing and advertising to shine a light on healthier options instead. And it also means doing more to make sure that kids have safe spaces to hang out and eat healthily. But most of all, it means listening, and I mean really listening to the brilliant young people themselves and making them part of the change. At Bite Back, we have some awesome young campaigners who are leading this fight and sharing their own experiences of being a teen in the UK right now. Please, please support them in any way you can and thank you for taking the time to listen. Here's their incredible leader, Christina. Hi, my name's Christina. I'm the co-chair of a youth board at Bite Back 2030, which is a movement fighting for a fairer food system. Today, I'm here at Oval, where I have invited one of the fiercest food critics in London, Giles Corrin, to see what it's like living in a place like this. Can't meet him. Is there something that you're used to? I'm used to walking past them. I don't know about going in. But you get that everywhere, isn't it? You know, just rows of chicken shops and Chinese and whatnot. Yeah, and full of school kids, sadly. Yeah, so where would you usually shop? I would probably, I sort of view online, do you have a cardo or something? And then we've got, to be honest, at the top of my road, there's a bunch of a greengrocer and a baker. I go up there and buy food. If I was eating cooked food, it would probably be in a restaurant. Maybe the odd kebab when I'm drunk. But I mean, I've got to say that I'm not a kind of daytime user of your high street chicken shop, really. Well, why don't we try one out now? Yeah? Yeah, I thought you'd never ask. Hi, guys. I have your delivery. I've got your orders. I don't have to do this. What is this compared to what you had yesterday? Ah, it's a little less green. I don't know, it certainly confirms what they've told me about young people in their terrible eating habit. We're acting as if we have a choice. Do you not? No, not at all. We're in a food desert, so there's no other healthy... When you say a food desert, what do you mean? A food desert is essentially a place where there's extreme limitations on how much healthy options and nutritious food there is compared to how much junk food there is. On the high street here, you see loads of chicken shops, loads of Chinese takeaways, but you don't see any sandwich shops or any healthy prats and leons at an affordable price. All these fancy healthy stores are expensive. It's like 10 pounds for a meal. So they can't afford it either, and it's not accessible. You don't see it on the high street. Out of 10, what would you give it after you finish? When you're miles from here at 10, it's a question of what you think it's aspiring to. So it's not trying to be a delicious healthy meal with vegetables and fiber and stuff. It's trying to be... It's quite tasty. It's salty, it's tangy, this pretend artificial mayonnaise made from E-numbers and emulsifiers and various terrible chemicals is making my tongue think that it's food. The bread is nice and stodgy. I'm getting a sugar rush. There's certainly no complicated dark-coloured things that I might have to actually digest. It's going straight into my blood. I won't have enough. Imagine having that every day after school. Could you do that? Having one of these every day. I feel like if I had one every day, yeah, I might never poo again. But yeah, it's not... It's the kind of thing which wants a warning on it, saying not to be eaten as part of a healthy diet. Right, and that's the key thing. So would you be happy if your kids ate that every day after school? No, of course not. I wouldn't be happy. My kids are like 7 and 10, so at this stage they can't choose for themselves. Well, my daughter, who's 10, goes out and goes to the shops a bit and then comes back with busy drinks and chocolate. But they're not yet at a stage where they're buying their own food on the way home from school. And certainly where I live is the school at the top of the road and the bottom of the road, and there's a lot of chicken shops and pizza joints around them. And I've aware that kids are living on that and not looking all that healthy. And yes, it isn't what I'd want for my kids. So, Jacob, do you spend a lot of time in chicken shops? Yeah, I know a lot of my friends go during their free periods. They go and get chicken, they go and get it for lunch. We literally go all the time. It's literally almost every day for someone. Do you go there to hang out as well as to eat? Yeah, that's... Is it a nice place to be? We don't really have anywhere else to go. We just get on a bus, go and sit and we walk around, go walk around the high street. See, I think warm is the right place. Yeah. And that's the problem. We don't get a choice because of all the manipulation from advertising. So, yeah, it's fun to have a burger sometimes with your friends when you're going out. But not every day. Not every time we leave school. Not every time, you know, we leave our house and get bombarded with... And do people you know only this? Yes, all the time, since we were like in year six. Jacob, when was the last time an advertisement got you to buy junk food? Ooh. It was a couple of weeks ago. I got the Mumma's text and that made me really, really crave pizza. I've been craving pizza for a while since then. I'm not going, I've got 17 photos here of all the instances where, like, pretty recently where me and some of the other youthful members have found adverts. It's got McDonald's and Uber Eats advert. So is this coming to you on social... That's just through the letterbox, yeah? That's through the letterbox. Here I've got a notification to my phone, 50% off of Uber Eats. So your phone, even though you were how old? I'm 16, I'm a child. These businesses are targeting children when legally that's not allowed. So they're getting away with all that. How are they doing that? Because if you're 16 you probably understand how the internet works and I don't. Is that because you've been searching Google for fast food and it knows? It's because I've got the Uber Eats app. I've got the Uber Eats app because obviously I'm going to have that app because I want to order myself some food but they shouldn't be able to send me these sort of things. And this is in a world where child health and child obesity is a major issue. If you look healthy enough you could get a bit more sun but apart from that, how come you clearly ignore these ads? Do you or do you succumb to them? No, I see these ads all the time. It definitely impacts me. I definitely see, for example, a post like this, this is Anton. He was a Love Island star. This is him sitting on his couch. Just came up with my feed. He doesn't look very nice though. You want to be like him. You don't see adverts where I get to you for like, no one's advertising salad. I'm just wondering when the last time maybe you've seen one. I've never heard of a healthy food. They just don't do it and it's because there isn't the margin. You know, with pizzas there's something like a 90% profit margin on them. I mean, I have thought about it before. Wouldn't it be crazy if you saw posters? I'm loving it and if someone's eating an apple. Yeah, I think it influence people in the same way that it does now to eat healthy food because it's in front of you. We want to ban junk food advertising. Entirely or just at times? Online and around. And we want to put healthy eating in the spotlight but that requires the cooperation of these big businesses to actually, you know, prioritise our health. Do you want to change the culture where people think it's all right to eat this food? Is that the main thing? And you think that starts young? Yeah, but we also want to reimagine our high streets. It's almost like giving back control to the people because when you look around and all you see is adverts you're not making the decisions yourself and it really does impact like the decisions you make and what you eat and maybe if there were more healthy adverts it would change like how people buy them. It's easier to stop things and discourage things than it is to encourage things. You can't... I mean it would have to be a government advert and they would argue they've got their five vegetables whatever it is, five portions campaign. I think you should probably suppress the advertising, shouldn't you? You should suppress the representation by a big business but governments are unwilling to do that. You know, they lobby, don't they? They get their money from the big corporations. Businesses will always prioritise their income, their money first but we also want to make it a massive aim of theirs to prioritise child health like the fact that, you know, on our youth board and our youth leaders all of us have like a universal kind of experience with food deserts and just not being able to pick healthy food, not having healthy options. We managed to sit down with Tesco and S.A. recently and Jacob, you asked them the questions, didn't you? Yeah, I asked them about their responsibilities to do with their advertising and we had like a little box of one of Nestle cereals I can't remember which one it was I think it was like Nest Quick or something like that. We had the box there we were literally looking at the nutritional information I think it was a ridiculous amount of sugar in like and we asked them why do you do this? Do you target towards children? And they just went, no, don't. And go, well, you've got cartoon characters on the box on these high fat sugar salt products. Do you not think that that's targeting towards children? And they basically just said, no, every single time we asked them if they'd pledged to changing that and changing the way that they advertise and again, they just said no. So do you think they should have plain packaging? Because they've done that with cigarettes which used to have pretty colours in our dough plain packaging on cereals and chocolates and that without help. I'm sure you've been in a supermarket and you like with your kids and they'll see something that they like based on, you know, having relevance to their lives maybe Elsa is on the front of something. And like you obviously, you couldn't attain to how that influences, oh, Dad, can I buy this? Oh, can we get that? That's really cool. It's like pepper pig and Thomas the Engine chocolates. That's obviously marketing towards children. And it puts, unfortunately, it puts a parent in the position of having to say no all the time which is a narrative that parents like me don't really want to have. You don't really want to tell your kids no. So it would be nice, wait, you have to sometimes but you want to be like the narrow the number of times. Do you think it would be useful to have cartoon characters on healthy products? Like put it on, I don't know. They used to, when I was a kid Popeye used to sell a lot of spinach. Did they not do that? I don't see a lot of children's culture. Is there not a thing, is there not some some rabbit that says he's a lot of character or anything like that? No, the rabbit's on Netsquik and that's the chocolate puff puff cereal. Really? Yeah. It's the same with McDonald's. It's kind of scary. They put in those iPads with games and stuff and you have these big tables. They've got games on iPads. Play games in McDonald's. So you buy your £1 chips and you sit there with all your friends almost like you're at school again. You all get to sit and talk and play games and it's like, well if this is the culture that you're pushing at us how are we going to grow beyond that? I think it's also good to say these games that are on the iPads they're for like six year olds. The games that are on there they're just like games for five, six, seven year olds. They really like small children games. They're like, they're not games that we would all play. We kind of go and sit on them because that's a bit of a joke. So that's going to get six, seven year olds and then their mums can sit there and they don't have to worry about it. Yeah, and they just sit there and they just eat their chips while they're playing the games on the iPads. The industry knows what they're doing when they're playing toys, cartoons. All this junk food stores within 400 metres of our schools. They know that they're marketing to kids and that has to stop. There seems to be a lot of things converging on kids kind of forcing them to eat this junk whether it's the advertising then there's nowhere else to go and then there isn't even anything else to do. Exactly. If the government helped us reinvent our high streets, you know, subsidise healthy food so they were actually kind of competitive there was competition with these cheap junk food we would go to those healthy places they act like we don't want to eat healthy they act like we immediately are drawn to these junk food, burgers and chickens and whatnot. No, we want the opportunity to be healthy and if the government actually were able to help us transform our high streets then it would be a much safer and better place for all of us. What about school food? Do they not feed you properly? I wouldn't describe my school food as healthy by any means. Was there a healthy option? Was there an alternative to eat anything? Not really. There was a time when our school council we had a few representatives from each student group and everyone feeds into those school counsellors and they feed back into the top of the school and everything. Everyone throughout my year group was very keen to have a salad bar that was something we really wanted it took us a good couple of months for them to go we'll put a lovely salad bar in there they put it in there and basically they took a bunch of leaves chucked them in a bowl got some olive oil a little bit of vinegar there you go, that's it salad bar it was there for two weeks and they got rid of it It's interesting in this sort of food history TV shows and everything that I've done the thing is is that over the last 40 or 50 years the world is largely because of the march of capitalism the world is perceived to have been better it looks like we have more choice and we're always told that the food from all over the world and all these different possibilities compared to the kind of grey, grizzly food that was available rationing which went on until 1954 and then all through the 60s and 70s the thing is the obesity crisis has risen with it so it's gone completely unregulated so there have been lots of great, colourful, lovely things the problem is you then now have to reign it back what you're saying is you have to put the genie back in the bottle a little bit, don't you? We've now got more homogeneous diets than ever we're all eating the same three grains that's because we're eating burgers, chicken burgers, chicken, burgers there's no... if you've got like 20 of us young kids from any random class in any random school in the UK and you ask them what they were going to eat I guarantee you at least 80% of them would say a junk food item because we haven't explored with food we don't know what nutrition is no one's taught us, we don't have the option it's tragic really one in three kids are obese in the UK that doesn't just come out of nowhere So do you think then you three are representative I mean in terms of you care about it are your friends mostly just chopping the fried chicken down and not really caring or would they be open to it if there was more healthy stuff available? I think it's a mix of both as kids we like having control and so when you tell us that we're not actually in control despite us thinking that we're making our own decisions the uproar you get is immense, it's crazy it's beautiful honestly and so when my friends found out about what I was doing and I taught them about it, educated them they were more wanted to see change and wanting to see a difference made because they felt out of control the issue is that we're not being heard there is a generational problem apart from anything else whether there's issues of geography or social class issues of money mostly people of my age 50 don't really understand teenagers so we just assume they just want to eat fried chicken we don't probably give it anything like as much thought as we do and then we think well kids don't listen to us anywhere not that I'm a lawmaker or anything but if you know I could tell them what to do but my children don't listen to me why on earth would two, three, sorry, kids that I just met in the park why would you possibly want to listen to me? it's difficult, you do tend to think about your own little bubble I mean I look out in the world and I try I write about obesity from time to time I know about grown ups and I know about little kids so I write quite often about the problems of feeding 10 year olds but that's very different from teenagers who are free agents, have a bit of money, not a lot but you have some and you can get out of the gap between school and home where we don't know what goes on and that's obviously when the eating gets done and obviously much worse things that I worry about so I probably would go home and look at the world slightly more through your eyes I mean I'm going to go home and so either to cook a delicious meal for myself or maybe my wife would have cooked something something nice and healthy for my kids or go to a nice restaurant if one opened so I can walk past all the disgusting looking fast food outlets and the stupid McDonald's adverts you know I'm loving it and some horrible sugary sugary thing, it doesn't really impact on me but if I think if I only had three pounds in my pocket and nothing to do for two hours and home wasn't even very nice I would probably follow my nose that way so yes, no, I would look at it differently but we'll have to go and do a restaurant review together 100% although possibly I should choose one Yeah, I agree Jacob, I'm Barracat and of course Giles Corrine too I feel that film puts an unerring light on the problems that too many young people face and we thought rather than just end it there it might be interesting to delve a little more into the issues and maybe think too about some solutions so we have gathered together what's a terrific panel to debate all of that for us now I'm just going to introduce them we have Paul Lindley, an entrepreneur and author, the founder of Ellis kitchen baby food brand Paul lives his life inspired and focused on the belief that we can build communities, businesses and societies that are richer in opportunity compassion and ideas Paul is the chair of the London child obesity task force and I should say is also an ambassador to the British Library's business and IP centre Tasha Mahakiora, board member of Bike Back 2030 had previously been on Bike Back's youth board and she was part of last year's British Library food season Tasha is an asylum seeker from Zimbabwe now living in Lewisham and at Warwick University Tasha is passionate about changing the way she lives in the world of obesity and creating equal opportunities for everyone to have access to healthier food options Tomasina Myers, chef, food writer and co-founder of the Oaxaca restaurants as a campaigner she's worked with organisations including chefs and schools, centre point women, women international and the soil association a great panel being led by a wonderful person Rosie Boycott, Baroness Rosie Boycott cross bench peer Rosie used to run the London food board and before that she was a newspaper editor and journalist, still a journalist she is a chair of Phoenix Britain and Vegpower, a trusted food foundation and a patron of sustain so we have a lot of incredible people with great ideas and passion and making things happen we're in great towns and there's a lot to talk about Rosie, over to you Thank you, thank you so much for those lovely introductions and it's terrific to be here and I was absolutely overawed by the film I thought it was a really well made lots of detail that you don't sadly often get I do want to ask everybody's views about that but the things that let out for me were very much the feeling that we need these chicken and chip shops for reasons that are not to do with food, they're to do with a place to go they're to do with poverty in people's lives and the questions of advertising and no choice so Tasha and you are part of Biteback so and you and I have spoken before about this I mean what do you feel why do you feel that the chicken you talked about food desert when you talk about food desert what do you mean and how does the chicken and chip shop play this crucial role within it Yeah I think when we talk about food deserts essentially it's any area that has limited access to fresh food and veg or nutritious food so whether that's you don't have access to a supermarket and you have to rely on perhaps corner stores or whether you don't have access to like a food market where you can have fresh food and vegetable that would be considered a food desert and I think the film really captures a lot of young people's experience with the food environment where they don't have access to these kinds of food and therefore have to rely on their local you know fast food stores and when we think about these kind of high streets that food deserts have a lot of the time they are played with fast food junk food stores so it's you don't have that option to think okay I have an option between a burger and chips or you know a salad bowl you don't have that salad bowl so you automatically go for that junk food option but I also think in terms of how we use junk food like how we use the fast food stores like you said we're not going there because we actually want these food a lot of the time it's just a social environment for us so we go there after school we go there to go meet with friends when it's cold and rainy outside that is the place that we go to and automatically we just buy food it's a social event for us and I think that is what's different and what a lot of older people perhaps can't relate to because obviously growing up for the older generation you had all these open spaces all these community club clubs that were available that's no longer an option for us so we're reliant on these stores to just meet with friends have a little laugh and just enjoy. I mean money also plays quite a big role and I can't remember talking to people and say well why don't you go to Costa and someone looked at me like I was bonkers and said well it's only three pounds for a cup of coffee and then they kick you out of you drunk cup of coffee so it is an issue of poverty isn't it? Yeah definitely so we think about you know how fast foods are priced they're priced at a lower price than any healthier alternative so as a student you just know it makes sense for me to buy six wins and chips for two pounds because I get a full meal and I'm able to get an affordable price but versus you know a healthier option that's priced at you know five six pounds so in terms of it's also convenient like I said it's really close to your school or close to your home the price point doesn't you know encourage you to choose a better option as well all these different factors playing into the supposed choice that you have. So Paul coming to you and congratulations with the London obesity task force you put forward all sorts of incredibly good recommendations but somehow a lot of what Tasha's just said gets to the heart of so many problems doesn't it that are really hard to push move. Absolutely thank you Rosie and congratulations Tasha it's such a powerful film and I think it really makes it clear that too many of our children and young people face the risk of life-long ill health just because of the circumstances in which they live makes it difficult for them to eat healthy food drink plenty of water and be physically active day to day today and I think as we've just touched on those causes span all sorts of things but fundamentally poverty and jobs and housing high streets transport advertising loads more all sort of environmental type stuff they're all interlinked and complicated but they all make it harder for families for children young people to eat well and be physically active and just looking at our film I just thought it was fantastic because not only does it highlight all those things but it also shows us that the power of talking and listening to people young people especially and the power of lived experience you know if we're going to solve anything we want to ask the people who live closest to where the problem is or anything for solutions they'll know the solutions better so you know those people living in difficult environments excuse me and those those people care I mean came out from the film young people care they have ideas they have articulate voices and they are a power for change so I'm optimistic actually that although we've got a really complicated and deep problem that we've got the way with all to think of solutions and let's hope we've got the bravery to act upon that so just staying with them I mean that this question of how this always used to torment me and when I ran the London food board you know this question of being able to pass the law that says no new chicken and chip shop within 400 metres of the school but of course it couldn't touch the ones that were already there and are you able now with new power may or or powers in any way to say that the chicken and chip shop also has to offer a commensurately priced healthy option and in a way push it forward or is it one of those lunatic things that the salad always remains behind because the chicken and chips are just so delicious well the mayor doesn't have those powers to do that right now but he has had the powers to convene all the councils and central government and the leaders in London to begin to act and he has as you say put restrictions in for new planning commission for fast food restaurants within 400 metres of school and he's also taken which is a world's first the opportunity to ban effectively high fat high salt high sugar advertising from the entire transport for London estate which central government hopefully will follow up with now with the watershed on television with online advertising let's hope they're brave to do that but you know as we start this conversation the chicken shops in themselves aren't the bad thing it's what's sold so for example one of the recommendations from our report called to action is that when after school and before school when there's going to be a lot of children in the chicken shop that the owners can't put on promotions and discount food and give a free chips or upsized chips or whatever in that time frame but it's a recommendation and it will need to be thought through but you know many ways this is similar to the sort of climate change challenge and the challenge we've got to move to a green economy you know if we're trying to move to a healthy economy the government ought to be stepping in and being able to support small businesses to be able to make that transition these small businesses may have to change their you know their capital equipment their cookers and their fryers and help make get grillers in for example their supply chains are going to have to be looked at their margins and their business funds and if we're serious we elect a government that we want to make these changes they've got to be brave and they've got to be able to help these businesses do the right thing and provide not only a safe space for young people but also healthier foods so that's that's super interesting I really agree with that I haven't thought of it quite like how much we need government subsidy to help those transitions be made but we also Tommy we also need I mean one of the things that I think comes up is that a lot of kids get don't get a good meal so therefore you're still super hungry at Hoppers 4 when you're drifting home and as Paul says this is a moment that a lot of these places pounce and they give you free chips or they give you incredible discounts for that and so I wanted to ask you about two things one is about the importance of a good meal and how your chefs in school program is going but then also to move to talking about advertising because that is the other big thing in that in that film and it is something that the government is trying to think about so over to you yeah I think I mean I think yeah quite that is such incredible charity and I think what Paul says completely right and hearing it straight from the water's mouth from these young people forced to live in these situations is so important for the government to keep listening to those people I think there are really interesting parallels between how we tackle climate change and how we tackle obesity because they're very linked as Paul touched on too you know in in Oaxaca now we've got 50% of our menus vegetarian and actually that's translated to 50% of our sales are also vegetarian and I think things like that are really important because we have to eat less meat and the problem is a lot of these chicken shops is that only offering protein and we know that protein is chicken that's being fed soy that comes from the Amazon so not only is it destroying the rain for us and our climate change and our quest to keep global warming down to you know 1.5 or 2 degrees but it's also then impacting childhood health which costs the NHS at the moment 6 billion pounds every year now imagine if you could take that 6 billion pounds and put it to good use and some of the things I think would be really good is to tax bad practice and reward good practice so for instance even how you cook which we also taught Paul touched on how you cook something so if you deep fry chicken all the oil you're using that oil also comes from places like the Amazon basin so that in itself is a bad practice but also you know helps to contribute to obesity so there should be some way where food or food business now are starting to be rewarded by the percentage of their menu that's vegetarian because this stuff is really important we don't have very much time to act on it and it contributes directly to public health because I interrupt that I'm really interested in your notion of how you would tax and reward around that I mean how do you see that actually how do you see that happening well I don't so I think there needs to be there needs to be some kind of taxation system and I think I think if you if you because right now all restaurants are having to start starting to put nutritionals on our menu so we're now looking all our calorie intake but the main focus is on calories so if I make a delicious bean tostada which has got some avocado some hodma dogs locally grown organic beans and pulses it's quite nutritionally dense so it's packed it's got calories in it so that's the only measured I can say on my menu but what it doesn't say is how much fiber it's got and one of the biggest contributing to bad health which kills 90,000 people every year in this country now poor health or diet related disease is our lack of fiber because all the food in those chicken shops got no fiber in it so if we could start measuring food on things like fiber instead of calories which we know is the real thing to contributing to good health and I think that would be a really good point I think the other point to address is where these young people go they've got no spaces, no community spaces you know right near me on the Harrow Road there was an amazing boxing club it's been forced to shut down there's another community centre that's hand to mouth the government has got to plow some of this £6 billion a year they've got to play with plowing them back into community centres and then the other thing is affordability so our model of putting a chef into a school and transforming an entire school, 600 kids in how they eat and eating proper nutrition eat dense food because we've got to start looking at the nutrition in food because there's no point in feeding kids when what they're getting doesn't fill them up doesn't give them any goodness and they're leaving you know with a poor diet and we know that the poor diet is costing them and it's costing you know £6 billion in the best childhood obesity the figure goes much much higher not even to mention the Covid crisis because the the International Obesity Foundation did a report that came out in March that showed across the world high levels of obesity and even being overweight so countries like the UK the US and Italy were over half the adult population overweight had the highest Covid casualty so that is a linear line that we can draw so but how do we stop that when children can't afford or young people can't afford to eat well and I'm really interested in turning every single local area has got a primary school and I can see what we do in schools we've got these amazing kitchens that there are primary schools with kitchens and the ones that don't have kitchens should have kitchens installed why can't those places become community centres after hours you could do a double service for instance and then they become public canteens I'm really interested in this idea it sounds socialist but how else do you get our nation eating well because we've got a complete lack of skills gap we've got people do not know how to cook we've got affordable housing with no proper kitchens they've got tiny kitchens with a room for a microwave so how do we get people eating well when they're in a food desert they've got no fresh fruit and vegetables next to them it's in affordable in any case so it should be subsidised because we know right now that processed food, ultra processed food is heavily subsidised in farming because it's growing wheat and corn crops that are heavily subsidised so that food is artificially cheap the chicken and shocked food should not be that cheap because we know it's extremely detrimental to the environment so I think there are masses of the solutions there and I know I've packed a lot of them in there that was a brilliant answer but I still want to just be more of a free-for-all I just want to get to this issue of the punishness of the advertising Tasha do you want to Tasha and Paul maybe both of you because you both made I'm just interested Tasha how does it affect you and Paul would you then say how you see solutions yeah I think advertising plays a huge role in terms of what young people choose to eat whether that's something that they're ordering or where they go out to meet friends the kind of food that they pick on the menu I think the film did really well Jacob showed how he's literally targeted and bombarded by these large fast food corporations whether that's on Instagram or being sent direct messages that oh hey we have an offer for you here I think that plays a huge role in the kind of foods that people are eating especially when you also have on top of that your favourite social media influencers being endorsed by these food companies again ultimately how much advertisement plays in society you know these companies don't spend millions millions on advertising for no reason they know it works and they know that when they're targeting young people who are so impressionable so vulnerable we're so easily influenced you know that they know exactly what they're doing and I think there's there ought to be responsibility placed on these companies on the kind of foods that they're promoting and it's great to hear that Boris Johnson has announced to end online junk food advertising because I think that is the biggest way that the food industry is able to manipulate young people. Paul what do you think do you think these um this legislation about junk food advertising I mean I'm really impressed that you've got it off the tube and it's great that we're going to go below the nine o'clock but I mean these companies are so smart they sort of wriggle around every back door or front door that they can find well we've got to set regulation and we've got to set the rules and we've got to have you know a body with teeth to impact people that break the rules it is it is complicated it's not just simple binary black and white but there's all sorts of foods that will fall into high fat and sugar that aren't aren't consumed by young people but you know I would start from the position of I think radically let's just let's start a conversation why on earth is anybody advertising anything at all to children at all not just unhealthy food because children don't have an income generally they can't work they have no legal redress they cannot sue under 18 year olds can't sue a company so they can't do that they have less life experience and therefore are going to be more exploitable as to understanding whether something is trying to sell them something or something is um at arm's length and just informational those environments where children are exposed to every day you know I start from question why do we have anything at all that children see that is designed because it works as Tasha said eloquently said um why don't we start thinking of that as a society I think we've got to change the refraining of us as a society you know it's easy to say the government over there well we elect a government and they should represent us and if we think it's unacceptable that 40% of children in London are at an unhealthy weight which will make their lives poorer and not allow them to live their potential through no fault of their own just because of the environment that they're growing up in in the fifth richest country in the world and all of the resources that we've got if we as a society think that that's okay then we should elect governments that propose that keep that going if like I'm sure the vast majority of people when they stop and think about it think that's not right then we've got to empower and encourage brave governments whether that's the local level and I'm a big fan of local government action as I said earlier I think the best decisions are made closest to where the problem is or at the national level and demand that they're brave because this isn't the sort of society that we want and so in many ways it comes back to us so I mean just to put it out there I'm not suggesting ultimately that all advertising to all children for everything would be banned but if we start from that position if we take ourselves out of the frame that we always speak about of accepting things as they are then you know my view my view of bringing an entrepreneur in to be the chair of London's child obesity or something so grateful they did I'm so surprised in a way that they did it but as an entrepreneur I'm saying we've got to try things that haven't been tried before some of them are going to fail if they fail that's okay because we can learn and we can adapt and we can make new policy and new ideas from it but if we always do what we always did we only get what we always got and we've got 40% of our children in London being an unhealthy way that's not good for them it's not good for our community or economy so what have you done what have you got in train that you think will work as a disrupter to this horrible pattern that you are in fact able to do at the moment because I know how difficult it is to get laws changed well the way I look at it there's three sort of areas we can affect change from we can call on the government to set rules and to seriously drive change we as individuals, we as communities we can use our wallet we can use our voice to affect change because businesses will chase profits and media will chase interesting voices and the other angle that's often overlooked in this is the sort of investor in the financial community which I think is crucial to this I've recently been involved with share action in demanding of Tesco that they set healthy food portion of their sales that are healthier foods as a goal as a strategy and report an account for them hitting that then upcoming AGM and they didn't like it but they've accepted it and they've set a really great target by 2025 to have 65% of everything that they sell that's food to be healthier OK Tasha what would you like to see in your local area that you think both the local community and the local government and the national government need to do specifically so that we wouldn't have to make that film again in 10 years time I mean that has to be everybody's aim that we're not here again Yeah that is such a big question so many answers I guess I think in terms of what I would like to see in my local community it's almost linked to what Paul is saying just having putting a spotlight on healthier foods because at the moment we've highlighted unhealthy foods having price promotions for them our high streets only offering one option I think we've just normalised the consumption of junk food so for me it's almost reversing the current status quo and then actually let's focus on placing these price promotions on junk foods let's focus on making healthier food options more affordable for everyone really not just young people alone but I also think what Paul was saying where we can say to get to a point where we can say as consumers we can essentially put our money where our mouth is that can only happen when we're given true choice and true option when I can have an equal I can make a conscious decision between having an unhealthy food option and a healthy food option and not be influenced by social media and not be influenced by advertisements and not be influenced by any other external factors but really have that choice which I don't think that we truly have but also just to touch on what Paul said earlier why do we even advertise to young people to young people or children at all we have to really remember the impact or the power of pester power the ability of children to pressurise their parents into buying a particular product and that is one of the strategies that the advertising industry really uses when you see a pack of chocolate with your favourite character when you see a yoghurt pot that is not because children inherently come into this world loving chocolate or loving yoghurt these companies know that if you place your favourite character children's favourite character on this product automatically children want it and I'm able to pressurise my mum or my dad into buying it so definitely controlling that environment really does play a role into changing the current status quo that we have in the world I can share some thoughts on ideas practical ideas that aren't too difficult the government could take and businesses already taking to help solve this thing we're looking for ideas aren't we we're looking for agents of change how we can force change one of them is through business there's a brand new business that launched this week called SMASH I'm interested I invested in my chair but it's an app for 13 to 24 year olds that they can use whatever they buy food that offers discounts on the healthier options that they can take when they buy their food so it will make healthier choices more affordable and accessible and hopefully by next year sort of wherever on the high street young people go to get food they'll change their behaviour because they're saving money they'll change their behaviour so please please please it's ridiculous that you don't that you have VAT on healthier food the dynamic you've got at the moment is a government is VAT is a hot versus cold sort of choice and it should be healthy versus less healthy so you know taking evidence to government and say now reframe what VAT is about if you want to change your behaviour now reframe what VAT is about if you make healthier food 20% cheaper by taking VAT off it then people will buy it young people will buy it government also has levers to do with the tax system which you build on the sugar levy which has been successful I've spoken about supporting small businesses I think we've got this opportunity away from food to water so many empty calories are consumed with fizzy drinks I think we should have a culture so relatively easy to do where free water is just available everywhere at all of us to fill up our bottles with in public buildings we can just nip into a library or a council building and fill up water there'll be water fountains outside all restaurants should fill up free water as an option when people go in that will take lots of calories out and that will be such an easy thing to be able to do so the government's got so many things that it's fingertips that it could start doing it all has to be coordinated and not just taking one policy of we'll address advertising now and ignore everything else it has to be a holistic whole system approach that they need to take the government really hates that because they want to be able to pick off one thing and say they've managed to change things but food's very complexity makes it clicky politically and therefore unpopular politically because certainly when you see it in a green context it isn't let's all switch to electric cars or whatever or let's all bicycle they're kind of one box solutions that you can take and food unless you do a lot of things you don't move the dial and that is always very complex it's not an excuse for doing nothing but it's an excuse in what way I think for the government to constantly throw the ball to another department what do you see as ways out of this that are doable and I would come back to Paul in a minute and say doable in what time frame well I think it's really fascinating that concept of advertising and in the film they looked at what would blank packets of really unhealthy food look like and that's something that no kind of sane person would think is a possibility and yet look at what we've done with smoking look at the fact that all cigarette packets are now kept behind those closed bars ultra processed food is killing 90,000 people a year and that fact it shocks me so much and in a time when we just lost so many people to Covid and there's such a link to that how can we in the fifth richest nation in the world accept that and when we know that all that food that is being advertised with the kind of teddy bears and the monkeys straight at children when we know that food directly leads to death later on how are we even how is that possible that those companies were allowed to one target and I'm really interested in that thing no targeting to children at all as a parent it sounds brilliant but you know if cigarette companies aren't allowed to do it then how is it possible that these companies and we know with ultra processed food it's not even in the NHS it's not a kind of it's not an accepted term but the ultra processed definition is when a food entity has more than five man made ingredients in it and it's very easy to see what these ultra processed foods are we know there's this direct cause or link so I think if we could somehow tackle those foods which we know are complex knitted kind of concoctions that basically bind soy or wheat into some type of what looks like food but what practically has no nutritional element to it and it's really detrimental to global warming so it just feels like that's quite a good target and the advertising of all those foods just has to stop well they have done it in Chile they have taken the Tony the tiger and things like that of frosties and children have really turned away from them and they started to market in blank boxes it's been incredibly controversial and the governments come under extreme lobbying but there was this very far sighted health minister that could see this damage so you can do it all of these things are absolutely can do I remember seeing the guy the general medical officer Liam Donaldson not shortly after he had introduced the smoking ban and him saying that he'd stayed out all night the night before because he was in such fear about what the public reaction would be to the announcement of the smoking ban and he said it was extremely very lunchtime I was the most popular man in England because actually everybody wanted it everybody was sort of begging for someone to say let's do this you know this is this is insane we shouldn't go on doing it and I feel that you know we have to get to that public tipping point that on the day they say okay all HFSC food is either banned or taxed extremely heavily or comes with a big warning label on it or a combination of some of all the all those three that it would be incredibly popular with I mean no mum wants their kid to grow up on unhealthy food but coming back to the film this is what you see as a reality for people would that be right Tash that it is you know I understand you're a stress busy mum trying to hold down a job you don't have much money you don't have the room for choice you have rubbish cooking conditions you can't you can't afford to buy and bulk you're dealing with the how expensive it is to be poor because you buy in small quantities it's not surprising you end up at the chicken and chip shop several nights a week or with the local pizza I'm very sympathetic to it I think it's a very difficult problem and what would you what do you want to see us do Tash this point Honestly such a heavy question Rosie so for me so one of the reasons I joined Whiteback was because I wanted to change the narrative when it comes to talking about obesity so for you know most of the time when we talk about childhood obesity or just adult obesity and overweight it's always oh it's your fault you know you decide what you eat and all of that and I do recognize the level of accountability but for me when I think about 20 30 years ago compared to now it's not that people have gotten greedy or lazy over these last you know decades but actually recognizing that the food environment in which people have changed and people living has dramatically drastically changed so for me it's about recognizing these changes so like you mentioned recognizing that actually people don't have access especially young people don't have access to these healthier options it's not affordable for them to even choose these of healthier options if they are available and we're even talking about convenience often fast food is either delivered to your doorstep it's probably five minutes away from your house or you can chuck it in the microwave in a couple of minutes it will be done it's different factors play into the kind of food that you're eating so for me it's also about you know I think Tommy you alluded to it earlier in that education plays a big role a lot of things that I know about nutrition I did not learn it at school that's for sure I went out there and I did the research or somebody told me about it and I think that's how I've been able to acquire this knowledge that helps me to make these better options so also placing an emphasis on educating young people children about nutrition so you know when we are faced with the two options that we know which option is better for us and if that option is priced appropriately I'm more likely to buy it and if that option is very close to my house again I'm more likely to buy it again so many different factors play into the kind of food that we are eating it does seem laughable to me that for so long the government has seen eating well as a kind of luxury as a kind of add-on to make this kind of fun the idea that in schools they don't tackle food or food education seriously or that it's important to have a canteen in a hospital so that as a nurse you're not more likely to be obese than any other person because you literally don't have access to good food I mean how is it that that's an afterthought when it's completely linked to mortality early mortality in our population in the fifth richest country and directly linked to climate change now our time is sort of up and I'm incredibly grateful to you all for all those amazing ideas and indeed problems that you've laid out but also a lot of solutions Paul, thank you so much for all the work you're doing and I'm really interested in the hearing about Smash that's such a good idea Tommy, thank you very much for chefs in school and all the work that is done and that you do around obesity and Tash, as ever, thank you for your youth campaigning and bringing us very much up to date with what it's like to have lived experience because that's the bit that people all too often forget in this debate that this is a real problem I hope that in 50 years time we'll look back on this as a sort of weird aberration something we once did in the same way that we once took fossil fuels out of the ground and thought that was perfectly okay as well so thank you all I'm going to hand back to the British library thanking them very much for putting on these series and films and debates and I hope that lots of people will listen to this and that concludes as to how they join us in this incredibly worthwhile in fact quite essential imperative campaign thanks so much Rosie you've been delving out the thanks but I think the thanks go to you for steering us through that discussion brilliantly and there wasn't lots of time to talk about all the issues that the films raised but I feel that that half hour or so was incredible actually thank you to Paul, to Tommy and Tasha, mainly to bike back 2030 for working with the British Library Food Season on today's event I think we've shown that this is urgent it affects us all and while the problems can seem so big there are solutions out there to be grabbed thank you so much KitchenAid for supporting the work of the British Library food season that's it food season for this year we are done been here since the middle of April now the end of May we've had 20 or so events covering such a range of food issues and voices there is an archive on the British Library website the BL player if you'd like to catch up on anything there's some really great stuff there I'm going to give the last word to Polly Russell who is the founder and curator of the food season but for me as the guest director thank you so much for joining us thank you so much Angela and thank you to bike back and to our panellists for a really fantastic discussion about a really vital issue and it feels like a fairly fitting place to end the 2021 food season discussing something which really impacts on us all so thank you so much I also want to thank Angela Clutton for being the most wonderful guest director across the season I want to thank Unique Media my colleagues at the British Library and of course our sponsors KitchenAid this brings the 2021 food season to an end but we will be back next year so goodbye and thank you