If the NHS can switch to buying local food everybody can.
A Hospital in Nottingham is saving £750k by sourcing food locally and James Martin, on the BBC yesterday, looked like he was steering Scarborough Hospital down the local sourcing route. If the NHS with their bureaucracy and tiny budgets can change, we all can.
It is amazing to see the systems set up by hospitals to deal with budget, nutrition, food hygiene and meeting time targets. Some food is cooked 3 hours in advance and by the time the patient eats it, has been heated cooled and reheated.
Corners are cut, menus simplified, and staff lose pride in their product. Schools have the same problem as cooks are separated from the kids eating the food and an unhealthy ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitude evolves.
James Martin was getting the cooks out to meet the farmers, changing menus, and the time between cooking and eating. The cooks were getting more job satisfaction knowing they were cooking good ingredients for patients who appreciated the change.
It all seemed so obvious in the end and the change took place without too much kicking and screaming.
Changing everybody else to shopping locally should also be reasonably easy, if we simply try it out and tell our friends. Buying local and cutting out the long supply chain makes local food cheaper and communicating with the producer gives us fresher, better food, the full story and accountability. As opposed to worrying about the label, animal welfare and other nasties.
These are just some of the positives of changing to local. The NHS hospitals sourcing locally are saving money, producing better food with happier staff as well as putting money back in to the local economy and encouraging more local food production.
BigBarn is here to catalyse the change with our local food map, ‘£’ flags on icons showing who is cheaper than the supermarket, and our MarketPlace to eventually compete with supermarket online sites.
So try it out and tell your friends. You can even join us and invest in BigBarn to share in future success.