Section 4: Impacts of food and financial insecurity
Case study: Gateshead Youth Assembly, what we think of our food environment
During 2019 Gateshead Youth Assembly members started an informal conversation with Emma Gibson from Public Health and Dr Ann Dale from the QE hospital about food choices. The conversation wound its way to focusing on the frustrations of the availability of fast food and often poor quality food (we never said that all fast food was poor quality though, we do like our pizza and burgers in moderation).
As we were about to start our summer programme, we talked about doing a bit of a research project about the kinds of foods available in the parts of Gateshead we regularly access and how our food environment can influence what we eat.
This wasn't qualitative data collection; it was more 'off the cuff' snapshots of the areas young people spend time. We have a bus day every summer, where we buy all day tickets and see where we get to, this enables some of our members to get used to using public transport (in the days of parents dropping us off everywhere) ... and we spend a little bit of time looking around the places we visit, so this year, we decided to take photos of the food shops available in the vicinity of the bus stops and surrounding areas in Gateshead.
The results, when we really looked at them were shocking for the young people In areas which are in wards of high deprivation in Gateshead, we saw options, of maybe a corner shop and a chippy, in 'posher' areas, there are still chippies and corner shops but there are also restaurants, bakeries, butchers, greengrocers, just really more access to fresh foods. How can we expect people to make good choices, when the options most available to them are all fairly poor?
Our plan was never to criticise the takeaways, like we say, we love a takeaway now and again as a treat. But, we all need local access to decent fresh food.
The young people expressed their views:
Sophie "I'm not surprised by the results of our project, but I am shocked, and disappointed at what we found in Gateshead. There was a huge difference in what was available, depending on where you live'
Freya "How can we expect people to buy good food if they have to get buses to find it, if you are on benefits, the bus fares are huge!"
Benjamin "We found it easier to get a bag of chips and a can of pop, than an apple. That can't be right!"