And we will now move to the short debate. Today's short debate is to be moved by Jenny Rathbone. I therefore call on Jenny Rathbone to speak to the topic that she has chosen, and for those Members leaving the Chamber to leave as quietly as those Members who are on Zoom. So, if Members could leave the Chamber quietly.

If Members could leave the Chamber quickly and quietly if you're leaving, and then I'll ask Jenny Rathbone to propose the motion in her name.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I've agreed to give a minute of my time to Cefin Campbell.

'We are what we eat' is often quoted, and examples of the consequences of poor diet are all around us. We have record levels of heart disease, diabetes and other diet-related illnesses, some of which we are only just beginning to understand. When we go shopping, cost tends to be the most important consideration of whether we buy something. Other considerations are: does it look good, is it organic, where does it come from?

On top of that is the barrage of advertising that encourages us to think that buying product X will make us happier, more successful and, in some cases, healthier. The Advertising Standards Authority has a role in limiting the more outrageous claims, and the Food Standards Agency and local authority regulatory services are charged with making sure food that is sold is fit to eat. But what of food standards? It is unclear how the Food Standards Agency is paying attention to food quality, instead concentrating on what might kill us. The adulteration of food was illustrated very clearly in the 2013 scandal called 'horse burger'. That was the most dramatic example, but we know that there is increasing concern, not least in this Chamber, about the amounts of salt, sugar and trans fats being sold in processed food, and there is increasing demand for more regulation.

Fraud is also an issue, and I was very pleased to read that Hybu Cig Cymru are doing their own monitoring to protect their good name. You may have read that they engage the services of a world-leading product fraud investigator to test that the lamb and beef sold in shops with the HCC label on it was indeed the premium Welsh product, and not some low-grade meat, fraudulently masquerading as something it was not. If labelling is not adequate, then people are being scammed.

But what about fruit and vegetables? References to food quality generally focus on the absence of a defect. The wonky parsnips that were being consigned to landfill because the supermarkets wouldn't buy them, as exposed by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, led to a change of policy there after there was a public outcry. Labelling takes account of things like firmness, their ripeness or provenance, and trade bodies exist to uphold claims that a product is organic. But the nutrient density of the food—the number of vitamins and minerals they can tie in to nourish you—is next to never mentioned.

So, to inform this debate, I commissioned a social enterprise called Growing Real Food for Nutrition, acronym Grffn, which is investigating the link between soil quality, growing conditions and optimal production of fruit and veg in the most carbon-neutral way, which is an increasingly serious consideration for us all, given our carbon-reduction targets. I've asked them to test some of the everyday vegetables and fruit available to my constituents, and they visited a farmers' market, a traditional fruit and veg street stall and three well-known supermarket chains on the first Saturday in September. So, fresh fruit and vegetables were bought from all five shops and tested on the same day of purchase using a Brix refractometer. What is a refractometer, you may wonder? It looks a bit like hair-curling tongs, which some of you will be familiar with. 

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

One supermarket I've managed to speak to about all this confirmed that they do indeed use a Brixometer in their factories to test the sugars, acids and texture of their products before they pack them up and send them off to their shops, but they don't test them for nutritional quality unless they've got something they want to challenge with the supplier, but they don't do that routinely. But it's a tool that's used by several supermarkets, if not all of them, and I haven't managed to get to all of them yet, but I will.

Now, the name comes from the work of a German chemist, Professor Brix, in the nineteenth century, who was apparently the first person to measure the density of plant juices, and this inspired the development of a Brixometer in the 1970s to enable growers to study how the nutritional density of a plant varies depending on the quality of the soil and the way the plant is cultivated. Brix tables enable growers to score the success or otherwise of their venture and adjust their practices or location accordingly. Now, this is something that all gardeners worry about, but you can imagine that viticulturists, who are involved in multimillion pound businesses, are very keen to use this method to enable them to distinguish between plonk and the vintage wine that will win them high-class awards. There's no doubt that the grape is the product that is demonstrating that the nutrient density of grapes is much higher than every other produce that was tested.

So, what were the results in Cardiff? Apples, carrots, lettuces, potatoes and tomatoes were tested from all five outlets, and results were assessed for each vegetable or fruit by ranking the highest average Brix score to give them a first, second, third, fourth and fifth. Now, these placements were then totalled to give an overall value. Perhaps you won't be surprised that the organic grower who'd picked his own produce had the highest overall score, but that was followed by the street stall that had bought all their produce that morning from the Cardiff wholesale market in Bessemer Road. The highest scoring apples were from a supermarket, so there's a good deal of complexity in this. But one point to just mention in passing is that the Brix tables for none of these products scored 'excellent'. Only two items were good, and both of them from the organic provider. That's because the health of our soil is in a terrible state, but that is a debate for another day.

I want to turn now to how nutrient density might inform public procurement of food and what that could do for the health of our nation. First of all, school meals. The 'Feeding our Future' report by Peas Please, which came out earlier this year, highlights how little veg is being consumed in schools, even in normal times. We're not the worst in the UK, but neither are we the best, and their Eat your Greens survey revealed that over a quarter of pupils ate no vegetables at all when they ate lunch in school, and when asked why, the answers varied from 'overcooked' to 'poor quality' to 'not appealing.' I think, in general terms, they're talking about how they don't like the taste. Their report calls for a new focus on procurement standards as well as investment in catering skills. Taste, it seems to me, is crucial, because children understand that. Blind tasting of everyday foods with pupils demonstrates that the ones they tend to like best were the ones that score highest on the Brix tables, because they taste better. That is what the nutrient content, the minerals and the vitamins tell you.

Indeed, if hospital catering standards also paid attention to the nutrient density of the food they serve, where their patients are mainly frail and elderly and don't want to eat much of anything, and if what they did eat was more nourishing, maybe that would accelerate their recovery and get them out of hospital more quickly. Speaking to the nutritionist and head of catering for Cardiff and Vale health board, they emphasised that, of course, where possible, they will want to locally source sustainable fruit and vegetables, and that's in the all-Wales contract for fruit and vegetables for hospital services. And quality forms a large part of their general requirement for a product, and they do ask for examples of the products they're buying. They now source all their fresh fruit and vegetables from a company that is based at Bessemer Road market, which you may recall was the one that scored second highest. So, that is very good news. But, of course, the produce they sell is not necessarily UK grown, and it's very difficult to track exactly when it was picked and how much deterioration in the food there had been since that had occurred.

The food standards for hospitals do indeed give nutrient specifications for hospital menus, as you'd expect, and all hospitals in Wales are mandated to comply with them. But, because of the nature of hospital patients being generally unwell and nutritionally compromised, more emphasis tends to be placed on the protein and the calorie intake, as well as encouraging people to eat by providing menu items that are aesthetically pleasing or ones that they're used to. I was very interested to hear that nutritionists have submitted new hospital catering guidelines for the future, which they submitted to the chief nurse, and it's been two years since they've heard whether these draft revised standards are going to be approved. And, of course, it requires ministerial approval, I'd imagine, because there will be costs involved.

I want to finish with an anecdote of a recent visit I did to a dementia care centre, where there was a completely brilliant chef, very highly qualified—he had previously taught in a catering college. And the fresh food that he was producing was hugely appreciated by these people with dementia, because taste is one of the senses that we lose last when we start to lose our senses when we grow old. And we know that eating well helps you to stay physically and mentally well, and that is why we have the healthy eating guidelines in our public places and in our public procurement.

And so, to sum up, I hope the Welsh Government will look at the nutrient density of veg and fruit that is bought for our schools, hospitals and care homes to ensure that we really are maximising the health of our nation and particularly the ones we are responsible for, and that this will provoke a much wider debate amongst the general public about what they need to be looking for when they are shopping, because there is going to be a handheld device that will enable shoppers to actually measure the nutrient density of anything that they think they might buy, which is being developed in the United States. So, this is something that is going to play an increasing role in the discourse about how we stay healthy with the food we eat. Thank you. 

I'd like to thank Jenny Rathbone for giving me a minute of her time to make a contribution, and I agree entirely with her that we need to emphasise far more the benefits of eating good-quality foods and the positive impact of that not only physically but also mentally. But I just want to introduce one slightly different aspect to this, beyond the benefits in terms of nutrition, and that is the impact on public health through the negative environmental impacts that we're seeing at present because the food supply chain is so far removed from where the food is produced. If you think about it, food has to leave the farm gate, travel hundreds of miles to be processed, and then it has to be brought back hundreds of miles to be placed on shelves in our stores. And this adds, of course, to the climate crisis, with more and more carbon emissions poisoning our air because of this. 

And this is exactly the issue we have around our extractive economy. Research shows that 51 per cent of Welsh milk is processed beyond our borders, and a review of the beef sector in Wales found that 72 per cent of Welsh cattle were slaughtered outside Wales. To fix this, we need to localise supply chains, so we need ambitious targets for local procurement. Just imagine the joint economic and environmental benefits if 75 per cent of food procured in Wales was sought from local suppliers. This would not only add value in terms of the quality of that food, but also mitigate the negative impact of the environmental climate change effect as well. So, it's time that we worked together across the Chamber to make this vision a reality for Wales, so I'm happy to support the debate. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

I call on the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being to reply to the date—Lynne Neagle.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'd like to thank Jenny Rathbone for introducing such an important topic for a short debate and also to thank Cefin Campbell for his contribution. How and what we eat has an enormous impact on our health and well-being. In annual estimates of how many years of healthy life are lost to avoidable illness, disability and death, four out of the top five risk factors are diet-related. And, as we know, diet is also a key contributor to health inequalities. We have a clear picture of what we should all be eating. The Eatwell Guide brings all the scientific evidence together in a simple pie chart. We're advised frequently by experts that we should be eating lots of fruit and vegetables, have a high-fibre diet with starchy carbohydrates, low-fat dairy and protein. Foods that are high in fat and sugar should be eaten in moderation and not too often. We should aim to eat only within our energy needs. It sounds simple and easy to achieve, but the six in 10 of us in Wales who are overweight and obese are testament that it is not.

We now live in an environment that actively supports us to overeat and to eat energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods. Over the last 50 years, what we eat and our patterns of eating have changed a great deal. The food and drinks market has evolved to provide more choice and availability than ever before. We are constantly encouraged and incentivised to buy and eat more food through food advertising, promotions and the high density of food outlets on our high streets. Drive down any high street, and the quantity of food on offer is astounding. For example, nearly a third of premises in Torfaen in my own constituency are fast-food takeaways. Plus, delivery services and digital platforms make takeaways even easier to access.

We are getting up to a quarter of our calories from eating outside of the home, and when we are at home, we're eating more ready meals and processed foods. The UK now spends around £5 billion a year on ready meals and 80 per cent of processed food sold in the UK is unhealthy. Because there is a bigger market for unhealthy food, companies invest more into developing and marketing it than the healthy choice. It is a dangerous and destructive cycle, and this drives the price. Healthy eating is not always the affordable choice, because foods high in salt, refined carbohydrates, sugar and fat, and low in fibre, are on average three times cheaper per calorie than healthier foods. This is a key driver of health inequalities, as our poorest are faced with difficult choices about buying food they can afford but that they know is not always the best for their and their families' health.

Despite us being exposed to a range of healthy eating messages, advice and guidance, most people in Wales do not achieve a healthy balanced diet. Most of us are familiar with the five-a-day campaign, yet, in Wales, only 25 per cent of adults say they reach this target, with some of our children eating even less fruit and veg.

And Jenny is right: we do need to understand the nutritional value of what we eat. All fruit and vegetables do have varying nutrient compositions and how they are harvested, stored, processed and cooked can also affect this. But the key message here is that more of us need to be eating at least five portions of all types of fruit and vegetables a day. Fresh, frozen, canned, dried or juiced all count towards the five. 

There is a wealth of evidence that consistently shows that populations that have a high intake of fruit and vegetables have a lower incidence of heart disease and some cancers. It is the mixture of components in fruit and vegetables that is protective rather than one individual component. In addition to their valuable nutrient content, fruit and vegetables are a good source of fibre. Eating plenty of fibre is associated with a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and bowel cancer. Around nine in 10 people in the UK are not meeting the recommended amount of 30g of fibre a day. Eating at least five portions a day is an important factor in maintaining a healthy weight. All fruit and vegetables provide vitamins and minerals and are also a good source of fibre.

But changing what we eat requires a shift in dietary habits, which we know can be very difficult to make. That's why we need to take a multifaceted, balanced approach that is grounded in people's everyday lives. We need to focus on sustainable change. So, what can we do? The Welsh Government's 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy is the first step towards a cross-Government approach to reduce obesity in Wales on a population scale. The strategy was launched in October 2019 and is supported by biennial delivery plans. There is no easy solution, but with a targeted approach across a number of key areas we aim to support people by making the healthy choice the easy choice. I will be launching a 2022-24 delivery plan early next year, which will include a funding commitment of over £13 million. This will include funding obesity services to provide access to support across Wales, delivering system-led activity that will work with our communities, piloting interventions such as the children and families programme, and developing behavioural-led campaigns to support sustainable change.

The strategy and plan will help to provide people with the right advice, information, tools and support to nudge behaviours whilst placing a strong focus upon changing the environment in which we live. This includes looking at price promotions, calorie labelling and planning to use our legislative powers. I'm also fully committed to working across the UK to take bold action. The only cross-UK measure to date that has had a significant impact is the soft drinks industry levy. This is not because people have shifted their drinks choices to avoid paying a few pennies more, but because the food industry have taken tonnes of sugar out of their drinks and invested more in their lower and sugar-free options. We want to build on this kind of success. We've consulted jointly on how front-of-pack nutritional labelling could be improved to give consumers much clearer information to make informed choices. We will also shortly be consulting on proposals to include calorie labelling on alcohol. We're also working with the UK Government to redress the imbalance in food and drink advertising. This is currently heavily weighted towards products high in fat, salt and sugar. Only 2 per cent of the total food advertising spend is on fruit and vegetables. By the end of next year there will be a complete ban on advertising products high in fat, salt and sugar pre the 9 p.m. watershed on television, and on paid-for advertising online.

The food industry is an incredibly important and innovative part of our everyday lives. I want us to work with industry in a productive way to achieve these changes. Whist introducing legislation will help to create a level playing field, I also want us to work with businesses to consider how we can support and scale change. Industry is being encouraged to make the food it sells healthier and less calorific. There have been positive examples to date, but much more can be done. For example, as part of our healthy weight plan we will be working with Welsh businesses to support reformulation through our food innovation centres.

We've also committed through our programme for government to produce a community food strategy. I will work across Government to ensure this links with the outcomes in our healthy weight strategy and places a focus on health inequalities. We know that the early years of a child's life are vital in creating those important healthy eating habits for the future. In order to support those parents who can least afford it, I'm committed to increasing the uptake of the Healthy Start scheme, which provides vouchers for children in families on low incomes to spend on healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables. This year we've increased the voucher value to £4.25 from £3.10 a week. We're also working to digitalise the scheme in order to increase accessibility and reduce the stigma that is often felt by those in receipt of them.

We will also be investing in a behavioural change programme through 10 Steps to a Healthy Weight to encourage incremental change with parents. Alongside this work, we will be working across the UK to consult on the labelling of manufactured infant food, which can currently be misleading and at odds with public health policy. We will be revisiting our Welsh network of healthy schools scheme, which will help embed a more targeted and outcome-focused approach, of which tackling childhood obesity will be a key priority. And we will work with national campaigns such as Veg Power, which is aiming to inspire kids from early years through to primary school and their teens. This will aim to create veggie-loving habits that they will hopefully keep for life and, in turn, share with their children. We were pleased to support funding of the campaign this year, which accessed over 100 schools across Wales.

We all know what we should be eating, but eating well and sustaining it, for most of us, is a constant battle. For good reason, the backdrop to our everyday lives has been termed an obesogenic environment. It's vitally important we change this. Year on year in Wales, as across the world, obesity continues to increase and our diet-related disease rates keep rising too. Obesity is on course to overtake smoking as the No. 1 cause of avoidable death and disease. I am absolutely committed to drive change across Wales. Through our 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy, we can help to make the healthy choice to become the normal choice in all of our lives. Diolch.

Thank you, Deputy Minister, and that brings today's proceedings to a close. 

The meeting ended at 18:21.