Leeds Food Consensus

Eat well because health matters

We have launched a campaign to ensure older people continue to eat well to reduce the risk of unintentional weight loss. Find out more about our eat well because health matters campaign and download information leaflets and a poster.

Dehydration awareness campaign

In Leeds we ran a campaign to keep older people properly hydrated which we linked with National Dehydration in Older People Awareness Week (11-17 June 2012). Find out more about our keeping older people properly hydrated campaign and download our campaign resources.

Please read on for more details about the Leeds Food Consensus...

What is the Leeds Food Consensus?

We are seeking to ensure consistent evidence based, person centred food messages for older people. The principles for all food related activity should enable good health and wellbeing for older people. This means there is a focus on enabling, promoting and maintaining independence.

In Leeds we are making a pledge to work together to reduce the risk of many older people becoming malnourished. At any time in Leeds, there are over 19500 malnourished people. It is very important to fight malnutrition, as it has serious health consequences. There are four principles to the Leeds Food Consensus which can be found below.

Four principles of the Leeds Food Consensus

• Keep properly hydrated
  Promoting good levels of hydration by ensuring people have at least six to eight drinks a day. This includes water, milk, tea, coffee and fruit juice.
• Eat for health
  Promoting a varied daily diet that ensures people eat at regular intervals with foods that support healthy living. This includes five portion of fruit and vegetables a day and food rich in starch, fibre and sufficient protein.
• Be a healthy weight
  Helping ensure people eat sufficient amounts of food to maintain a healthy weight and encouraging activities to promote or maintain muscle mass. Frontline workers will be asked to look out for any signs that show unexpected weight changes. 
• Support and enable
  Frontline workers will help older people and their carers to ensure appropriate support is available when needed. This includes preparing and serving food in a safe hygienic way and promoting good oral and dental health. 

Our pledge

We are making a pledge to: keep older people nutritionally ‘well’; and identify and act for older people, who are nutritionally ‘vulnerable’.

Would you like to sign up to the pledge?

If you would like to sign the pledge on behalf of your organisation please register your interest here and we will be in touch soon.

Thirst for Nutrition Conference

Papers from the Thirst for Nutrition Conference are available to download by clicking this link. 

Related pages on this site

Leeds Food Consensus PledgeNHS Leeds and Leeds City Council have set up a pledge for other local organsiations to sign up to show their commitment to tackling malnutrition especialy among older people.Keeping older people hydratedIn Leeds we are running a campaign to ensure older people are properly hdyrated as part of our commitment to the Leeds Food Consensus.Thirst for nutrition conferenceThirst for nutrition is a conference looking at issues around nutrition and hydration for older people. It is being held on 25 January 2011

Related downloads

| Leeds Food Consensus briefing document for frontline staff.pdf (1.51 MB)