Healthy Eating

Eating a healthy, balanced diet is an important part of maintaining good health and can help you feel your best.  This means eating a wide variety of foods in the right proportions and consuming the right amount of food and drink to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

There is a direct link between what we eat and our health and wellbeing. A poor-quality diet, along with being overweight or very overweight, increases the risk of such things as coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some forms of cancer and can also have negative impacts on emotional wellbeing.

What we are doing

Newcastle City Council is a member of the Food Newcastle partnership which was established  to coordinate food activities across the city and provide an environment for creating a healthier food culture. 

Together with wider stakeholders the partnership became members of the Sustainable Food City Network and produced the Newcastle Food Charter and Newcastle Good Food Plan.

The Good Food Plan is our way of addressing a range of issues affecting the city based on the Sustainable Food Cities framework which helped identify six main themes:

• Diet-related ill health and access to food
• Good food for all – tackling food poverty
• Building community food knowledge, skills, resources and projects
• Strengthen the local sustainable food economy
• Transforming catering and food procurement
• Environmental sustainability – reducing waste and the ecological footprint of the food system

Sugar Smart Newcastle

Sugar Smart Newcastle is our programme of activities to enable the City to become a member of the national Sugar Smart UK network.  It aims to help the people of Newcastle to reduce their sugar consumption by coordinating a range of activities across the settings highlighted in the action plan.  This will create an environment where it should be easier for people to make healthier choices around the food and drink they consume, which will ultimately help people to be a healthier weight and have reduced need for dental treatment. 

The key messages that the Newcastle Sugar Smart campaign promotes are:

• Reduce the frequency of sugar intake
• Keep sugary foods and drinks as part of a meal
• Reduce the amount of sugar consumed every day

Newcastle Can

Newcastle Can is our flagship programme that encourages and supports people who live, work or visit Newcastle to eat less and move more. The aim is for people to come together to support each other to lead healthier lives and maintain a healthy weight.  It provides practical information as well as recipes and links to local events and activities.