Award Winning Community Meals on Wheels Across the City of Brighton & Hove
…Food is Medicine, Food is Love
East Brighton Food Co-op in the UK Top 5 finalists for the UK NatWest SE100 2024! A fantastic achievement and one the whole team are very proud of. In 2022 & 2023 EBFC were in the UK NatWest SE Top 100, to be in the top 5 is extra special for our tiny team with a very big reach.
HELP SAVE THE NHS and the nations health – EBFC are carrying on the campaign to make Meals on Wheels Statutory.
15% of the Health & Social Care budget goes on treating the consequences of malnutrition in the UK equating to over £22 billion a year.
Making Community Meals on Wheels statutory will save the NHS billions by keeping our most vulnerable people healthy and well. Nutritious regular hot meals reduce the need to go to hospital in the first place and facilitate hospital discharge whilst lowering readmission rates. Community Meals on Wheels are an integral part of Preventative Care and After Care.
We are working tirelessly to make community meals on wheels a statutory service, we have the experience, the 5 stars and the evidence and the NHS needs help.
Our neighbours who are housebound appreciate EBFC’s Community Meals on Wheels and the team who cook and deliver our delicious freshly made nutritious meals. Our meals are packed with 30+ plants and delivered with a good old fashioned catch up.
“The 30 different plants a week theory emerged from research carried out as part of the American Gut Project, a crowd-sourced project involving more than 10,000 participants. Its goal is to better understand the gut microbiome in health and disease.
“They discovered that participants who ate 30 or more different types of plants per week had gut microbiomes that were the most diverse – and hence health promoting,” says Dr Shireen Kassam, professor, author and founder and director of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK.
That’s where the magic number 30 came from – this was the tipping point researchers found which made the most marked difference to participants’ health.” BBC website.
Our team of volunteer champions have cooked and delivered 300,000 + freshly made nutritious community meals on wheels across the City of Brighton & Hove since March 2020 to our most vulnerable and we are still cooking and delivering across the city, now working in partnership with the East Central Brighton Primary Care Network & the Hospital Discharge Teams at Royal Sussex County Hospital, who are prescribing a 2 month referral to the EBFC’s Award winning Community Meals on Wheels Service delivering care and nutritious meals to our most vulnerable neighbours. Prevention is better than cure. Please read our Review here :EBFC’s Community Meals on Wheels Review October 2023 live link is here.
…updated figures below…
From 2020 – 2022 The Health Foundation commissioned a report called Health Equity in England: Marmot Review 10 Years On explaining how access to affordable fresh nutritious food has a massive affect on outcomes for people’s longterm health. Bryan Coyle, founder and CEO of EBFC contributed to this brilliant Review.
SUPPORT
Thank you to the wonderful Enjoolata Foundation and the great article on their website about our work, Nourishing Community, Sustaining Change…and Lulu for her much needed help, volunteering on one of our busy community meals on wheels service days! Enjoolata were one of our first ever funders to step in and help during the pandemic and continue to be a supportive force for us and other community organisations. It was lovely to have Lulu at Baker Street seeing first hand what we do and how we do it. Pictured here with Wonderful Wendy, who regularly helps save the day on her day off from work.
A MASSIVE THANK YOU to everyone who donated to our Crowdfunder and especially our biggest donation from the wonderful workers at Infinity Foods Wholesale Workers Co-operative for their fantastic £2,500 donation towards our Citywide Community Meals on Wheels Crowdfunder. This brilliant local natural and organic food workers co-operative have been quietly supporting the EBFC for the last 3 years with the Infinity Co-op members voting to donate to the EBFC each Christmas since 2020. The first time we received a donation from them it was a complete surprise. Infinity Foods Wholesale’s support was and is magical. Check them out https://www.infinityfoodswholesale.coop/
Latest TV’s William Ranierre came to film EBFC’s kitchen in full swing and spread the news on EBFC’s National Meals on Wheels Petition to make Meals on Wheels Statutory. We were also Invited up to Parliament and The House of Lords to present our Data Impact Report in October and meet fellow meals on wheelers. The NHS England Leadership & Personal Care Cohort 2022 are very interested in our report and petition. Please go to our petition page to sign both petitions!
EBFC’s meals are made with Love by our wonderful team and are packed full of nutrition. We were making and delivering daily fresh nutritious meals citywide during Covid in Brighton and Hove. Our meals are freshly prepared with the best ingredients and we have meat or vegetarian options, all delivered to your door by our Delivery Angels.
If you would like to make a donation for someone to receive a fresh nutritious meal or meals please see our bank details below.
£3 will pay for 1 fresh healthy nutritious meal to be cooked and delivered
£20 will pay for 1 weeks fresh healthy nutritious meals to be cooked and delivered
£95 will pay for 1 months fresh healthy nutritious meals to be cooked and delivered
East Brighton Food CIC – Account No. 38650998 – Sort code 23 05 80
COVID 19 & 300,000+ Fresh, Nutritious Citywide Community Meals on Wheels
Our volunteer champions have cooked 300,000 + free freshly made gourmet meals and delivered them across the City of Brighton & Hove since the first lock down in March 2020 to anyone who would benefit from a fresh nutritious meal regardless of postcode or income and we are still cooking and delivering across the city, now working in partnership with the NHS.
East Brighton Food Co-op started operations in May 2019 to bring healthy food and community cooking to Whitehawk, Bristol Estate and Manor Farm through community events, workshops and cookery classes. We had to cancel these activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020 we sprang into action in support of our community establishing the Emergency Food Hub & kitchens; the first kitchen at the Bristol Estate Community Centre and the second, our home of 2 years, the Robert Lodge Community Kitchen, where the local residents were a huge support; volunteering to cook, clean, keep the stores in order, deliver, and being altogether amazing; then our third base, Kingfisher Court Community Rooms in Whitehawk where, after cooking our citywide meals on wheels for our most vulnerable residents we also put on our hugely popular free Friday barbacue from April through to October for some very welcome outdoor fun and food after the unprecedented Covid 19 lockdown.
We have now taken over the lease on 24 Baker Street, BN1 4JN for our community meals on wheels delivery service kitchen, very exciting steps in our journey…
To place a meal order please email: eastbrightonfoodcoop@gmail.com
If you would like to volunteer for cooking, delivering, admin or anything else please contact: janet@eastbrightonfoodcoop.uk
Since lock down began it’s been a pleasure and a privilege serving our community during such challenging times and we will continue to do so into the future.
We are a not for profit Community Interest Company and are working hard to bring the healing power of a great nutritious meal to our communities across Brighton & Hove. Also fruit & veg box schemes, cookery classes, lunch clubs, volunteer, training & employment opportunities as well as bringing enjoyable, nutritional, educational events to our local area, putting in place the infrastructure needed to make sure the people who live here can enjoy cooking and eating healthy food.
EBFC ran 2 Emergency Food Hub Kitchens in East Brighton during lockdown, Robert Lodge in Whitehawk and our first kitchen, The Bristol Estate Community Kitchen.
And for information updates on everything from Brighton and Hove City Council please click here.
…keep washing your hands and surfaces
Our pilot project is funded by Nesta and the Dunhill Medical Trust’s Social Movement for Health in addition to Causewayed