Council's healthier takeaway scheme 'challenging'

Councillors are told fast food businesses are often reluctant to take a risk on healthier food options

A scheme to encourage takeaways to offer healthier food options is proving "challenging", councillors in Bradford have been told.

The Living Well scheme, run by the authority's public health department, aims to ask fast food outlets to include items with lower levels of fats, salt and sugar on their menus.

Members of the council's health and social care scrutiny committee were told it could be difficult to encourage popular outlets to change their business plan.

The programme, delivered by Keighley Healthy Living, currently works weekly with 17 businesses and provides guidance to a further 89.

Tim Howells, head of public health at the council, previously told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that many takeaway businesses, which may operate on a slim profit margin, were unwilling to risk a shake-up of the food they offered due to the risk of losing business.

During the meeting, Mr Howells said: "It is a challenging area of work, I'm not going to lie.

"We've invested a small amount of money into the programme, but it hasn't been a huge success anywhere."

He said other areas had spent much larger amounts on similar schemes but "with not much of a result".

"It has worked better with the markets," he said.

"We've given advice to the food traders in Darley Street Market and hopefully in the New Year the app will include healthy options on the menu for the traders there.

"We'll be expanding that to our other markets – markets are easier to influence than takeaways."

Committee members were told many fast food outlets were based in deprived areas, where many residents had little access to healthy food options.

Mr Howells described these areas as "food deserts", while other areas were "swamped by unhealthy food options".

He said the team had approached some businesses to try to encourage them to adopt healthier business plans, but that the numbers of firms on board with this was small.

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