The Hidden Health Emergency Lurking Behind Britain’s Food Price Spikes

As geopolitical tensions escalate in the Middle East, UK officials are preparing for potential food disruption scenarios, including shortages of key products [1]. While we don’t know whether such outcomes will happen, the underlying pressures on our food system that are being exposed, are clear.

Rising energy prices, disrupted trade routes and increasing input costs are feeding through already. For farmers and food producers, fuel and fertiliser alone can account for up to 25–30% of production costs [2]. As these inputs become more volatile, so too does the cost of putting food on shelves.

But this is not just another story about food price inflation. New analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) that looked at more than 30 years of UK food price data, found that food prices “rise rapidly during shocks but reverse only slowly and partially afterwards”, resetting the entire system onto a higher cost basis - an effect researchers describe as the “rockets and feathers” effect. These shocks are increasingly happening in overlapping waves, with global food systems (still heavily dependent on fossil fuels for fertiliser, transport, processing, and packaging) remain acutely exposed. 

This raises a more fundamental question for a Labour government seeking to improve living standards and strengthen our national resilience: what does food security actually mean in practice?

For most of the post-war era, food security was understood in terms of calorie sufficiency supported by stable supply chains. And for many years post War, that was rational. The priority was to produce more food, more reliably, at lower cost - and the system delivered.

But the risks the UK faces today look very different.

We are not short of calories - yet we do not have widespread nutritional adequacy. Diet-related disease is a leading driver of poor health. Obesity alone costs the NHS more than £6 billion each year, while food insecurity affects around one in seven adults in England [3][4]. For households with children in the lowest income quintile, a healthy diet now requires around 70% of disposable income after housing costs [5].

The same global shocks that drive up food shortages and prices also shape what people eat. Crucially, the ECIU analysis suggests these shocks do not fully unwind. In nominal terms, food prices reverse by a median of just 1% after six months, 5% after one year and 7% after two years. When costs rise, households adjust - often by switching to cheaper, calorie-dense foods that are lower in nutritional value. Over time, this reinforces existing health inequalities and increases pressure on public services.

At the same time, the UK’s food system remains exposed to global volatility in ways that are often overlooked. We are reliant on imports for many of the foods that support healthy diets - particularly fruit (more than 80%) and vegetables (around half).These supply chains are sensitive to climate disruption, energy costs and geopolitical instability – around 56% of all fruit and veg we import (by value) comes from countries with a medium to high vulnerability to climate change, according to ECIU analysis.

The average person in the UK is only eating between 55-60% of the recommended fruit and veg. Much of what is eaten revolves around a handful of key foods – another nutritional vulnerability in the system; We rely on just five veg categories for half of all the veg we eat, and 60% of this is imported, while 70% of our top five eaten fruits are imported. If banana imports alone went down, this would account for 20% of the UK’s fruit consumption, with severe micronutrient implications for those on lower incomes [7]. 

Recent events highlight how quickly these risks can materialise. Disruption to energy markets affects fertiliser production, transport and food manufacturing. In horticulture, where energy can account for a significant share of production costs, volatility can quickly translate into reduced supply or higher prices – both of which are likely in the coming months as these start to filter through. This is where the definition of food security really begins to matter.

If resilience is measured only in terms of supply volume and price, we miss a critical dimension: whether the system continues to deliver nutritional food to our citizens that support health. Exposure to volatility is not just a risk to availability - it is a risk to nutritional quality.

Strengthening domestic horticulture can reduce reliance on fragile import chains for key nutrients. In some months, a single farm in Senegal supplies 60% of UK radishes and 50% of green beans. Supporting farmers to reduce reliance on volatile inputs and farm more sustainably can help stabilise production in the face of global shocks. And evolving food security metrics to include nutritional outcomes would better align policy with the realities of public health.

Taken together, these shifts would move the UK towards a more resilient food system - one that delivers not just enough food, but the right food.

For a government focused on growth, resilience and prevention, redefining food security through this lens offers a clear and practical way forward. Exposure to volatility is an increasing risk to nutritional quality, affordability and long-term public health resilience - and as the Bank of England has warned, climate-related shocks are generating precisely the kind of inflationary pressures monetary policy is least equipped to manage.

References

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4n3k3k1k1xo

[2] https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/middle-east-conflict-impact-on-farming/

[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-obesity-treatments-and-technology-to-save-the-nhs-billions

[4] https://foodfoundation.org.uk/press-release/new-data-shows-one-seven-households-children-struggling-afford-food

[5] https://eciu.net/analysis/reports/rockets-and-feathers

[6] https://eciu.net/analysis/reports/rockets-and-feathers

[7] https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/programmes/m002w8bw