Nottingham's public health team say they want to commit to trying to tackle the city's obesity problem. A recent report found more than half of adults in Nottingham are overweight or obese, whilst NHS data shows the city has the highest number of children living with obesity in the East Midlands.
But Nottingham's public health director says people do not end up overweight just because they "really like food." Nottingham City Council says the number of fast food shops near the home and the skills that somebody has grown up with are among the challenges people face when it comes to healthy eating.
A Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Nottingham was adopted last year, which sees the city council work with partners such as the NHS on improving the health of people across the area. Smoking, financial wellbeing and people with multiple disadvantages such as homelessness and mental health issues are among the focuses of the strategy. The health team say they want to support the expansion of community supermarkets in the city
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Another one of its key elements was tackling the number of people in Nottingham who are overweight or living with obesity. The report, published in April 2022, said that 66.2% of Nottingham adults are overweight or obese.
The report also said that 28% of the city's adults are physically inactive, meaning they do less than 30 minutes of physical activity per week. The new strategy runs until March 2025 and was developed by figures including Lucy Hubber, the Director of Public Health at Nottingham City Council.
Speaking about the need for the strategy, Lucy Hubber said: "There is stuff that we can all do as individuals that will make not just ourselves healthier, but could also help make Nottingham a healthier place, like using our brilliant parks or walking the kids to school. But it's often much more complicated than that and we know that people are overweight or obese for many and varied reasons, it's rarely because somebody just really likes food.
"It's not enough for us to offer smoking cessation clinics or weight management clinics, what we've got to do is bring together the local authorities, charities and NHS to create the environment in which people can more easily make those healthier choices. That means it's not just about healthcare and whether somebody can go and see a GP.
"It's as much about whether we have good opportunities for people to work, whether people have good education, healthy and safe houses and affordable nutritious food. So we're not just concentrating on how people are treated but at those wider things as well."
The April 2022 report set out the top ten risk factors leading to poor health and death in Nottingham, including dietary risks, high blood pressure and child malnutrition. The city's public health team say many of these risk factors relate to poor diet and a lack of physical activity.
But Helen Johnston, Consultant in Public Health at Nottingham City Council, said people faced many challenges when it came to healthy eating. She said: "We know there is food insecurity and as the cost of living means that prices rise, the affordability of healthy food can be one of the factors that really limits people in having a nutritious diet. We're keen to make sure we have a range of provision, yes the food banks but also access in every neighbourhood to healthy food in a way that is really sustainable.
"Time, knowledge, skills and affordability are all part of thinking really broadly about food insecurity. It's about people having the confidence and time, but also the saucepans and access to a microwave. It also links to mental health and wellbeing and how people are feeling about their ability to prepare those foods."
Helen Johnston said one way in which the council was working to improve access to healthy food was through an expansion of community supermarkets in the city. Work on this so far in Nottingham has included a mobile supermarket from the charity Himmah in St Ann's, selling cheap and healthy food in one of the city's most deprived neighbourhoods.
As well as the focus on adults, Nottingham's public health team are also trying to tackle childhood obesity. Their 2022 report said around 25% of children in Reception are overweight or obese, increasing to around 40% by the time they are in Year 6.
David Johns, also a Consultant in Public Health at Nottingham City Council: "We're trying to reduce the number of children who are overweight or living with obesity. We had a school head teacher who recently said that through some of the conversations we've had about the importance of eating for good health, they've managed to convince their governors to get a post dedicated towards eating for good health within the school.
"They are driving that agenda within the school and thinking about using their green spaces as allotments to teach children about food production, thinking about how they take maths and English lessons out of the classroom to incorporate physical activity into them. They are also thinking about the food offer that schools have and making sure children leave at the end of school having already had their 5 a day."
The Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy, through its four primary focuses, aims to improve the life expectancy of people in Nottingham. The city's public health team say in terms of healthy life expectancy, the length of time that an individual can expect to live without poor health or disability, the average is 55.6 years for Nottingham's women and 56.4 years for the city's male population.
Lucy Hubber added: "We're moving away from just counting by clinical diagnosis, we absolutely want to reduce incidents of cancer and I'm not sure people understand people understand how strongly obesity is linked to cancer. But it also comes down to people's ability to succeed in school and hold down a job.
"The more people are able to hold down a job, the more they are able to afford and prepare a wider range of foods. The more we can close that loop and create a strong, happy and resilient population of Nottingham, the more we will be able to thrive as a city."
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