Let’s move from Products to Produce
FoodSavers response to the UK’s Good Food Cycle Strategy, from Inn Churches’ CEO Juli Thompson
Just one week ago, in our newly opened FoodSavers WellNest and Cookery School, we were delighted to welcome colleagues from DEFRA, local food actors and partners, to hear Minister Daniel Zeichner’s Good Food Cycle plans.
The Good Food Cycle sets out a fresh framework for the future of the UK’s food system – and at FoodSavers, we welcomed the visit and the intent. But strategy (those who know me know I hate that word unless it comes with actions) is only the starter. If we’re serious about tackling hunger, poor nutrition, and health inequalities, we need to move beyond policy cycles and start sowing seeds of change where it’s needed most: on the ground, in our communities.
We cannot fix food poverty with policy promises alone. We fix it with equity, empathy and access to good, fresh food.
FoodSavers partners run 19 pantries in some of the most deprived parts of Bradford. Each week, we hear stories that aren’t captured in spreadsheets. They are captured in empty lunchboxes, skipped meals, and quiet shame.
Here’s what our June 2025 data shows:
- 78% of people surveyed went an entire day without food
- 55% still lacked access to nutritious meals, despite 80% feeling confident in how to shop for them
- The real barriers? Financial strain, transport, cultural disconnect, and time poverty, not ignorance or apathy.
The Good Food Cycle’s ambition for “safe, affordable, healthy and appealing food for all” is exactly right. But it needs resourcing. Because for people living in food insecurity, policy doesn’t arrive in a strategy – it arrives (or doesn’t) on a plate.
The Good Food Cycle‘s priorities—healthier diets, reduced food waste, more resilient systems mirror much of what FoodSavers already does in Nourishing Communities:
- We turn surplus food into shared meals
- We support people with dignity, not dependency
- We create affordable access to good food
- We give Nourishing Communities Vouchers as a cash first model
- We listen to what our communities are telling us.
This isn’t about just teaching people how to cook. It’s about whether they can afford to, want to and have someone to share it with. Food is never just food. It’s stability. It’s mental health. It’s the difference between isolation and connection.
FoodSavers Pantry Manager
Moving from products to produce means more than swapping ultra-processed snacks for fresh greens. It means recognising food as a basic human right. Because people don’t want pity parcels: they want the ability to choose, prepare, and share food that reflects their culture.
The FoodSavers model is backed by evidence and lived experience. Our research this summer found:
- 76% of pantry users now eat more fruit and veg
- 55% say their lives have improved since engaging with FoodSavers pantries
- 63% enjoy conversations with staff and volunteers, showing that food is a route to connection.
But still Over 60% report stress or shame in navigating existing food aid and this has got to change.
Growing a Fairer Future
The Good Food Cycle offers a welcome vision – but without confronting structural inequality, it’s a bike wheel spinning in the same old dirt paths. We cannot shop our way out of a broken system, nor will nutrition improve if the fridge is still empty at the end of the month.
We need a food system that:
- fixes hunger by fixing poverty
- reflects culture, time, and lived reality
- moves from short-term supply to long-term food sovereignty
At FoodSavers, we’ll keep doing what we do best: turning surplus into solidarity, produce into purpose, and community insight into action.
We don’t want charity. We want change.
FoodSavers Parent Focus Group
We invited Daniel Zeichner and DEFRA to come and look around the Darley Street Market, and he did. He listened to our stories, spoke to our community partners and tasted local made produce. He tasted the difference a dignified food system makes. We like his chances!
