eatwell.gov.uk to bring you all government food advice

29 Jan 2010 01:26 PM

The Food Standards Agency is to expand its eatwell website to bring together all government information on food aimed at consumers. Advice on food safety and healthy eating will be integrated with information on a wide range of other topics relevant to consumers' food choices, with a particular focus on environmental and wider sustainability issues.

The Agency will work closely with other government departments and bodies over the coming year to gather up-to-date information, and it plans to launch the remodelled website in spring 2011.

The decision to expand eatwell follows the completion of the first stage of the Integrated Advice for Consumers (IAC) project that set out to explore the potential scope of this integrated advice website.

The report of this scoping exercise, 'Integrated advice for consumers: discussion and analysis of options', provides a snapshot of existing information on government websites, identifies gaps in consumer advice and recommends options for implementing the new integrated site. The report is available online at the link below, alongside summaries of research undertaken with consumers and school-aged children as part of this project.

Earlier this month, 'Food 2030', the Government’s new food strategy, set out the Government's vision for the food system and how to achieve it by 2030.

Food 2030 confirmed the Government’s commitment to providing an integrated source of government information and advice for consumers, to help people make informed choices about the impact of the food they choose to eat (available at the link below).

Originally, the need for this website was identified in the Cabinet Office 'Food Matters' report, published in July 2008, also available at the link below.

'Food Matters' highlighted the need for government to take a more joined-up approach, not only in providing information to consumers, but to food policy overall. The need to tackle in an integrated way the health, social, environmental and economic challenges in the food system is an approach reinforced by the recent Food 2030 strategy.