A team of experts in eating behaviour and public health at the University of Liverpool has secured almost £4m to deliver a 5-year project to better understand the UK's food environment.
The 'food environment' is the combination of physical, economic and social conditions that affect what and how much the public eat. In the UK, unhealthy food products are common, widely promoted, cheap to buy and available in lots of different places. This makes it far more likely that people consume unhealthy diets, leading to diseases including obesity heart disease and diabetes.
Thanks to £3.9m funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), Professor Eric Robinson will lead a team of experts from the University of Liverpool, University of Oxford, City St George's University of London and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, to research the benefits of current actions to tackle this national health challenge and highlight possible new ones.
Professor Eric Robinson from the University's Department of Psychology said: "Local and national governments have recently tried to improve the food environment by taking new actions - including banning outdoor unhealthy food adverts. While these actions are promising, they cannot solve the problem as a whole."
Dr Charlotte Buckley, also from the Department of Psychology added: "A main aim of our project is to evaluate existing food environment policy interventions and identify new ones. Importantly, we will work in collaboration with communities and the public to guide and inform our work as it progresses."
The research team brings together academic expertise from four different UK universities as well as charity Diabetes UK. Together they will use a variety of research methods to work with the public and policy makers to better understand how the food environment could be changed to improve diet and health.
Significantly, a key area of research will focus on areas of socio-economic deprivation, where there is a high prevalence of unhealthy diet and health conditions.
Professor Robinson concluded: "Over the next five years, we aim to generate robust evidence to support reductions in NHS costs and decrease the number of patients requiring care. By providing this evidence, we increase the likelihood that our research will drive meaningful action and lead to improvements in public health."
Professor Eric Robinson is joined by colleagues from the University of Liverpool's Institute of Population Health:
Professor Emma Boyland, Chair of Food Marketing and Child Health, Psychology
Dr Charlotte Buckley, Lecturer, Psychology
Dr Amy Finlay, Post-doctoral Research Associate, Psychology
Professor Martin O'Flaherty, Professor in Epidemiology, Public Health, Policy & Systems
Dr I Gusti Ngurah Edi Putra, Lecturer & Research Associate, Public Health, Policy & Systems.
