a colleague and I undertook a pilot voucher scheme. That was #FreshStreet. The idea was to give people vouchers for fruit and veg that they could spend with small scale vendors. What was different and important about it was that it was place based. I wanted every household on the street to be given the vouchers because I thought it would reduce stigma, change food culture and It would keep the money hyper local and steady the market for that vendor. It was more than just a health project. The project has been handed over to others now so I am no longer involved, but the idea continues and is still something I think about. It’s kind of the underpinning idea behind my recent provocation about a #UniversalBasicDiet. What if we gave people £5 a week to use on fruit and veg in their market or with a fruit and veg vendor? They could choose not to use it. But most households on the FreshStreet project did. We even saw in Bradford a market trader taking a van into a food desert so people could use the vouchers with him. We also found that people shared the food, talked about the food, and ate differently. No one was being told not to eat other things, they were just being given the capability to eat better. Picture of Trump with a lot of junk food.

What if we had a #UniversalBasicDiet? #Freshstreet #Foodstudies