Making small diet changes can lead to a healthier future

With research showing the average daily intake of fruit and veg in Scotland is only 2.9 portions, compared to the recommended 5 a day, making bigger changes or setting difficult food goals could be unachievable for some Scottish households.

According to Dr Gillian Purdon, Head of Nutrition at FSS, trying to make too many changes at once to our diets and eating habits can be overwhelming.

To help tackle Scotland’s poor diet and support them on this journey FSS, along with partner organisations, has developed a new online guide – EatWellYourWay.scot.

With the aim of encouraging people to make simple changes to help improve their diet, Eat Well, Your Way offers a variety of straightforward steps and useful advice. The guide also caters for those shopping on a tight budget and consumers who are more sustainability-conscious.

Despite the poor state of Scotland’s diet, 88% of adults say they understand that an unhealthy diet can lead to poor health, an encouraging sign that there is an eagerness to improve our eating habits.

Some top tips, from Dr Gillian Purdon on how to start making these small steps towards a healthier diet:

• Try to include a piece of fruit or veg with every mealtime, for example some blueberries or a banana with your cereal, an apple with lunch and steamed fresh or frozen veg with dinner.
• Choose something simpler to cook when you know you will be busy – you could buy ingredients beforehand and make bigger portions, to keep some in the freezer for next week.
• Lots of recipes can be adapted to the things you already have in the fridge. If an ingredient is too expensive, or you don’t like it, you can usually swap it for something else.
• It can be tricky at first but try to get into a routine of cooking weekday meals. This can be a good opportunity to get kids to help with the preparations.
• If you’re partial to a couple of biscuits with your afternoon cuppa, buy plain biscuits as a less sugary choice or start off by having plain biscuits during the week and chocolate biscuits at the weekend.

 “Eat Well, Your Way encourages people to make small, manageable changes to their diet, in ways that suit them,” says Dr Purdon.

“This is a new resource which focuses on practical advice on how to adopt healthier options. It is designed so that people can find inspiration and make changes that suit their circumstances, as we know that making lots of changes at once isn’t always sustainable. This guide offers a realistic way to help people work towards new healthier food goals.”

While a new FSS report, due to be published in the coming weeks, will shed light on the impact lockdown and the wider pandemic has had on Scotland’s diet, research has found that ‘discretionary’ foods, such as sweets, chocolate, cakes, crisps and sugary drinks made up a quarter of all food and drink brought into homes in 2020.

With plans to further tailor and evolve Eat Well, Your Way in the coming months, the first roll-out of the practical guide is packed with advice based on three key areas, shopping, cooking and eating out – areas of our lives where we can make simple, meaningful changes.

Dr Purdon continues: “We have known for a long time that improving dietary health in Scotland represents a huge challenge and the pandemic brought into focus how this can make us susceptible to serious disease. 

“Discretionary foods continue to represent far too high a proportion of our shopping baskets, and purchases on promotion continue to be skewed towards these products. It’s important to highlight, however, that this campaign is not a move away from the Eatwell Guide but a realistic way to help people make healthier food and drink choices.”

Dr Julia Allan, Senior Lecturer in Health Psychology at the University of Aberdeen, and who helped develop Eat Well, Your Way, said: “Eating is about much more than nutrition. People make choices about what to eat based on lots of factors - how it tastes, what it costs, how they’re feeling, who they’re with, and so on.

“In many cases, people don’t really ‘choose’ at all – they eat what’s on offer, what’s convenient at the time and what they can afford. Eat Well, Your Way takes this into account and acknowledges that it can be difficult to make healthier choices.

“The new guide supports people to make small, positive changes to what they eat and drink and offers evidence-based ways to get motivated, take action and build healthier habits.”

Launching today, the new FSS campaign will feature a bold and direct TV advertisement, outdoor media, experiential activity in shopping centres and a highly targeted digital campaign.