A Redruth woman has set up a vegan-friendly business that aims to tackle food poverty and childhood malnutrition through education, cooking classes, online resources and a community food programme.
Carrie Vallance from Redruth is tackling food poverty and childhood malnutrition with her community interest company, Food Troops.
The organisation offers a food box service called Vegucation Club which aims to educate families on the many ways they can cook and serve fruit and vegetables, making the experience fun through a variety of activities, shopping lists and herbs and spices.
The vegan-friendly food boxes supplement the community food programme which provides fresh food, fruit and vegetables for families in Redruth and surrounding areas, called RescU packs. The RescU packs are made up of perishable supermarket food that can’t be used by food banks and would otherwise have been thrown away.
Vallance said “How is it that nearly half of all fruit and veg grown is wasted when we had two million kids go hungry in the UK last year? It doesn’t seem right, and I think food education, especially starting with our next generation, is key to our own food security.
“Food banks do a brilliant job of providing much-needed food to people in Cornwall but they usually only offer non-perishable foods leaving families under-nourished, especially young children who need fresh food to aid their growth and development.
“There are also people in Redruth and the surrounding areas who are not entitled to use food banks yet still struggle to afford or budget for healthy foods for their families. We can help them with our community food programme.”
Food Troops is currently looking to raise £5k for a permanent venue in Redruth for cooking classes and its RescU services, through the Crowdfunder platform.
