FoodSEqual Food Study

The FoodSEqual project is part of a five-year national consortium project led by the University of Reading and involves academics from Plymouth, Sussex, Kent and Cranfield Universities. It is funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strategic Priorities Fund (SPF). The vision of the FoodSEqual project is to provide citizens of socio-culturally diverse disadvantaged communities with choice and agency over the food they consume by co-developing new products, new supply chains and new policy frameworks that deliver affordable, attractive, healthy, and sustainable diet. The FoodSEqual Health project is a follow-on project to investigate associations between diet, health, and food affordability in the context of the FoodSEqual project.

Diet is an important modifiable risk factor for many chronic diseases, but there is a paucity of dietary data from disadvantaged communities. The last Low Income Diet and Nutrition Survey (LIDNS) was conducted more than a decade ago and disadvantaged communities are known to be under-represented in other national surveys.

The aim of the study is to investigate diet and factors contributing to dietary choice in a sample of socio-culturally diverse disadvantaged communities using a combination of dietary intake assessment methods, including nutritional biomarkers.