About us

Community Food and Health (Scotland) became the new name for the Scottish Community Diet Project in November 2006.

Ten years earlier the Scottish Community Diet Project was set up as a result of the recommendations contained in the Scottish Diet Action Plan  to ‘promote and focus dietary initiatives in low income communities and bring these within a strategic format’.

Our aim remains to ensure that everyone in Scotland has the opportunity, ability and confidence to access a healthy and acceptable diet for themselves, their families and their communities.

We intend to achieve this by ensuring the experience, understanding and learning from local communities informs policy development and delivery through encouraging and enabling communities, policy makers and policy deliverers to have the confidence, enthusiasm and capacity to constructively engage with each other and address food access.

We are funded by the Scottish Executive Health Department  and based within the Scottish Consumer Council. We are assisted by a Steering Group made up of a range of groups and agencies, which advises on the nature and direction of the work.

Placing the team within the Scottish Consumer Council ten years ago was part of an early recognition of food's place within not only the health improvement agenda, but also the social justice framework.

Links within the health improvement agenda, particularly with physical activity and wellbeing, and externally with those working on social inclusion, equalities, regeneration and sustainable development have been largely driven by our commitment to listening to local communities, where the logic of ‘joined-up thinking’ and ‘agenda spanning’ has long been applied.

Our work involves geographical communities (eg. neighbourhoods, villages) and communities of common interest (eg. users of mental health services, travellers) and currently we have been commissioned by the Scottish Executive Health Department to particularly focus on homelessness. An initial two-year project is attempting to share learning from innovatory local initiatives, using food as a vehicle for the development of independent living skills, and embed this in common practice.