16 Jun 2020 Guest Blog: Sheffield is Sweet Enough!
In our latest blog we hear from colleagues from The Foundry, who have worked with Sheffield City Council to launch their very own campaign ‘Sheffield is Sweet Enough’ to help reduce tooth decay and obesity in the city over the next five years.
Reports showed that almost 1 in 4 children are overweight or obese when they start school in Sheffield, with this proportion being even higher in areas of high deprivation. There are also more school children in Sheffield being admitted to hospital for painful tooth extractions than ever before. Consuming too much sugar and poor diet is linked to tooth decay and other health problems such as obesity, which is then contributing to long-term ill-health such as diabetes and/or high blood pressure.
The 5-year initiative will use behavioural insight techniques to ultimately encourage behaviour change in the city. It will provide information to local people on the effects of sugar and give them the tools they need to make educated choices about sugar to support their family. The overall objective is to increase the understanding of how much sugar is too much and the impact this can have on our health.
There is a confusing amount of information out there, so the website includes a guide to help people understand the Public Health England recommended daily limit and what this means for families. The dedicated website has lots of interesting facts about sugar, lists of worst offenders within certain food groups and top tips for healthy sugar swaps.
Did you know there is 54g of sugar (that’s around 13.5 teaspoons) in one bottle of Coca Cola! With the daily recommended sugar limit for adults (and children over 11) set at 30g (7.5 teaspoons) it means you will consume almost double what you should in 1 bottle.
The information is broken down into advice for the general population with a particular focus onpregnant mums and parents of babies and young children, as the campaign aims to support Sheffield City Council’s Food & Obesity strategy which focuses on prevention and early intervention. It also provides practical advice and information, as well as direct referral into services such as weight management and parenting programmes for those who would like further support.
Local people and organisations of Sheffield can ‘make a pledge’ to state what they will do to reduce the availability and accessibility of high sugar drinks and foods in the places we live, work and play, in the hope that this will start to encourage behaviour change across the city. To support the pledges, a series of educational materials have been created in two versions; one to suit home learning and one to suit classroom learning. The aim is to help children investigate the sugar quantities in some popular foods by categorising them into good (hero) or bad (culprit) food and drink items, and discover how much sugar is too much.
Promotional items such as posters and leaflets have also been developed based on local insights gathered from focus groups and stakeholder surveys. These can be printed and displayed in healthcare waiting rooms with key messages for pregnant women at midwife appointments and parents and children within doctor, dentist and hospital waiting rooms.
There has also been a ‘Feed your family for less’ downloadable resource pack which includes tips for saving money when food shopping helpful ways to cut back on sugar with tasty recipes.
To find out more please visit: https://www.sheffieldissweetenough.org/
Click here for the FREE downloadable resources: https://www.sheffieldissweetenough.org/download-materials
You can also follow, like and share on social media:
@sheffieldissweetenough on Instagram and Facebook
@sweetenoughshef on Twitter
The Foundry are a creative agency focused on vision, product and people. They like to work with companies that make lives better and brands which help improve health and nurture wellbeing.
