For You
We have lots of help to keep you and your family on track with healthy eating. Eating fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrains and good quality meat and fish provide the necessary nutrients that your body needs to create new cells, clean toxins, and to just function every day! Eating healthily can help prevent future diseases, give you more energy and help you be more alert.
balanced diet and shows the proportions of
the food and drinks that make up a healthy diet.
For the environment
If you manage to eat great, local, fresh, sustainable, fair trade and organic food whenever you can, you will not only be doing your bit for your own health and wellbeing, but you will be supporting the local economy, helping to provide good and stable jobs for workers around the world, giving farm animals a better life and going easy on our fragile planet. 30% of greenhouse emissions in the UK are from our food systems but if we eat locally produced food we can help to cut these emissions. For every £1 invested in local food between £6 and £8 stays in the local economy in the form of improved social and economic outcomes, including health and wellbeing, training and skills.
Be part of the future food vision for Edinburgh:
Here’s what you can do to make “Good Food choices” and be part of the movement for change
Help make sure everyone has access to fresh, fair, healthy, affordable food
Ask your local shop to consider selling more fresh, local, healthy food
Choose fresh food wherever possible
Choose fair trade food wherever possible
Volunteer for a local community organisation working on food issues
Use growing and cooking food to bring your community together:
Cook from scratch with your friends or neighbours
Grow your own food – at home in window boxes or pots, in an allotment of community garden
Find ways to share your skills with food, from recipes to tips on finding great produce
If you cook too much, share with your neighbours
Enjoy and celebrate diverse, tasty and healthy food
Share recipes and host a food event
Talk about good food – to your friends, neighbours and community
Support our local food economy:
Shop local
Try out a veg box scheme from a local farm
Start your own food enterprise or food buying co-op
Ask your school or employer to serve good, local food
Make sure your food is good for the planet as well as you
Keep a reusable shopping bag handy
Choose local, seasonal, organic food when you can
Eat less but better quality meat and dairy, supporting high animal welfare standards
Avoid and recycle packaging
Plan meals and use up leftovers to avoid wasting food
Recycle food waste that you can’t avoid or compost
Shopping for Sustainable Food
Markets and Farm Shops
Vegetable and Food Box Deliveries
Refill Shops, plastic free outlets, community shops and co-ops
There is an increasing demand from consumers for producers and food distributors to reduce the amount of “single use plastics” in food packaging. Refill shops and some of the national chains offer an alternative, providing you with the option to purchase loose food and other household products free of packaging. You will find dried goods that you purchase and take home in your own container, unpackaged fruit and vegetables and milk in glass bottles. Local and ethically sourced products are also part of the product range stocked in refill shops.
Local outlets include:
- Dig In Bruntsfield
- Eco Larder
- Real Foods – Tollcross and Broughton Street
- The New Leaf Co-op – Marchmont
- The Refillery – Corstorphine and Newington
- Weigh to Go – Leith
Resources
Community Food and Health Scotland has a wide range of resources for individuals, groups and communities. The work aligns with the national food and health policy to ensure that everyone in Scotland has access to a healthy diet. A useful resource if you are wanting to set up a new food project, research a policy area or find funding.
Food for Life Scotland is about transforming our food culture and making it easier for local authorities to get fresh, local, sustainable food onto school dinner plates. The nationwide Soil Association programme is funded by Scottish Government and includes recipes and resources on growing and seasonal food.