René Cassin submitted evidence to the Right to Food UK Commission, where we highlight a critical but often overlooked issue: food adequacy.
The right to food includes the provision that food must be adequate. For faith communities, this means that cultural practices over the consumption and use of food is protected. When adequacy is not implemented, and food systems assume that all diets are interchangeable, many people are excluded in practice. For communities across the UK, this affects dignity, health, and the ability to participate fully in society.
Our submission is grounded in qualitative evidence from across the UK. We spoke directly to representatives of Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Bahá’í and Christian communities, as well as frontline food providers working in community settings. Through interviews and discussions, we gathered testimony on everyday experiences of accessing food, the barriers within public services such as hospitals and schools, and the role of community and faith-based support. This approach allowed us to capture direct lived experience, including issues that are often hidden from official data, particularly around stigma and informal support networks.
Through our research, we found that food systems frequently fail to meet the needs of faith communities. People told us about being unable to access food that meets both medical and religious requirements, being given food that is incorrectly labelled or not appropriate, feeling forced to avoid services altogether. Inadequate access to the right to food impacts much more than one’s diet. In many cases it directly impacts where people are able to live, or which schools to attend, and how they interact with their own and other communities.
These issues are rarely caused by deliberate discrimination. Instead, they arise from misunderstanding of dietary requirements and a lack of training and resourcing for providers.
If policymakers are serious about enshrining food as a human right in UK law, it must include duties to:
- Ensure food adequacy, including cultural and religious appropriateness, across public services such as schools, hospitals, care settings, and asylum accommodation.
- Avoid one‑size‑fits‑all provision, recognising that different communities face different barriers to accessing appropriate food.
- Require training and guidance for those involved in food procurement and catering, so that dietary requirements are understood and implemented accurately, rather than assumed or approximated.
- Consult affected communities directly, rather than relying solely on census or aggregate data, which respondents noted often undercounts or misrepresents smaller communities.
- Provide accountability and routes to redress when food provision repeatedly fails to meet adequacy standards.
Without these duties, there is a risk that a right to food would exist formally while continuing to be inaccessible to those whose needs fall outside dominant norms.
