Julie Clay
Like many women in her 50s Julie Clay found herself with kids off the books and a job that she had been doing for too long to excite her anymore. So took the opportunity to think about what really interested in her and whether that might be the right thing for her to focus on next. It seems it is and Community Interest Company Food etc is the result.
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We caught up with her at her home in Bedfordshire to find out more.
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What is Food etc?
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Food etc uses food that would otherwise be wasted to provide community meals and basic cooking lessons that include information about reducing food waste, preparing healthy food and the benefits of healthy eating habits.
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What made you want to set up Food etc?
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The idea is that it addresses some of the issues that I feel really passionate about and need tackling as a matter of urgency – food waste and obesity.
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How much of a problem are these issues in the UK?
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It can’t be right that the UK is the 7th richest country in the world and yet according to the World Bank nearly 2 million people in the UK are undernourished and that last year the Trussell Trust supplied over 1.5million three-day emergency food parcels, an increase of 18.8% on the previous year. Yet 250,000 tonnes of the food that the food industry currently sends to waste each year is still edible, which FareShare estimates is enough for 650 million meals.
Public Health England stats also say that 1 in 3 children are overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school.
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Why do you think you can help to address them?
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I’m not certain I can but I’m going to have a flipping good go at it! I’ve run my own marketing consultancy business for the past 20 years through determination, ability and quite often sheer bloody mindedness and am hoping I can apply the same principles to getting this to work.
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Where are you at with all of this?
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It’s at a fairly early stage and I’m working out the best ways to deliver it. I am talking to lots of local organisations including charities, businesses and public bodies and, fingers crossed, will be launching in various ways during the Spring.
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What is your vision for Food etc?
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Short term to have a couple of community meals running weekly with cookery lessons alongside and build this up with more locations or more frequent meals. Longer term I’d like Food etc to have a permanent base where people come for all sorts of things to do with food and nutrition. I’m not sure exactly what that would look like yet, but could include anything from community gardens to cookery lessons, weaning classes to lonely and isolated people sharing their cookery skills, child assessment clinics to community larders.
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Find out more about Food etc at www.foodetc.org.uk
