Nutrition and poverty in industrialized countries: report of roundtable discussion.

The report of the Nutrition Task Force’s Low Income Project Team (LIFT) was published in early 1996. The report, Low Income, Food, Nutrition and Health: Strategies for Improvement (Department of Health, 1996), contains far-ranging recommendations, as discussed by Nelson (1997). The principal recommendations were: to develop a coordinated national approach on food and low income, to establish local food partnerships, to set-up a national network and database on food and low income. Shortly after its publication, a wide range of organizations with an interest in poverty and nutrition were invited to attend a forum in London in May 1996 on Tackling the Problems of Diet and Health in Low Income Families, convened by the Chairman of LIFT, with the objective of carrying forward the recommendations. The ensuing discussions identified the need for the work of LIFT to continue via a cross-sectional forum, including representatives of local and national government, and constraints to progress which need to be addressed (Table 1). Questions that emerged from the discussions included: how can we bridge the gaps? what are the barriers to progress? what is the nutritional agenda, and how can this be communicated? how can we effect the shift from consumerism to citizenship? These questions, together with the constraints listed in Table 1, formed the basis of the roundtable discussion. To assist the discussion, some of the constraints were translated into the examples listed in Table 2.