Serving Up: Aligning public procurement of food for UK public institutions with healthy sustainable diets

The UK’s Labour government has already identified “nutritious food” as a key part of its manifesto pledge for “greater focus on prevention throughout the entire healthcare system” to improve health and reduce NHS costs. Food is also a key driver of UK emissions. Approximately £2 billion is spent annually on public procurement of food and catering services, which makes it a significant policy lever for the UK government to influence a just transition to sustainable healthy diets. The Labour Party commendably pledged in its 2024 Manifesto to “set a target for half of all food purchased across the public sector to be locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards”. We propose definitions for these standards below. In addition to these 50% targets, we strongly recommend baseline standards for all food procurement rooted in healthy sustainable diets, which are required to reduce emissions and can significantly improve health outcomes – these suggested standards are listed below such as a binding target for average emissions per meal. This would yield significant cost savings which could be invested in procuring food that is certified to higher environmental standards in ways beyond emissions reduction – better for soils, air, water, animal welfare, biodiversity and farmer incomes.