Campaigns like ours have been vital in tackling food poverty

Editorial: Much can be achieved through voluntary action and by the hard work and expertise of charities such as The Felix Project

Staff and volunteers pack and prepare food parcels at the south London warehouse and distribution centre at St Margaret’s Church (Getty)

It is especially appropriate that the recognition of The Independent’s Help the Hungry campaign at the Society of Editors Awards should come on the day the National Food Strategy is published.

Overshadowed, inevitably, by Brexit and the Covid crisis, food poverty has long been one of Britain’s greatest challenges, coupled, as it so often is, with the obesity epidemic. The paradox of the young, especially, growing overweight because their families lack the means or time to prepare more nutritious, less calorific meals, is a familiar and distressing one.

The Dimbleby Report lays out the leading role that the state can play in steering families towards a better diet, through measures that only the government can take – such as a special tax on sugary and salty foodstuffs to encourage the food industry to reformulate its products in a healthier direction. “Prescribing” fresh fruit and vegetables and launching a mass public education campaign are also areas best tackled by public agencies with the full communications apparatus of the government behind them.