While we may all recognise the importance of eating healthily, putting nutritious, home-cooked meals on the table is more challenging for some than others. Low incomes paired with the high cost of ingredients, health challenges, caring responsibilities and a lack of cooking skills are some of the factors that make it harder for some to maintain a diet that will support their health and wellbeing.
A new partnership between Lewes District Food Partnership, Seasons Wholefoods and Foundry Healthcare seeks to increase access to good food through a pilot community meal kits programme which using social prescribing as a tool to tackle food insecurity and support health outcomes.
Launched in April 2025, the community meal kits provides eight households in Lewes District with a weekly bag of fresh and seasonal ingredients accompanied by a recipe card for an tasty and nutritious plant-based dish. Seasons provide all the fresh and high-quality ingredients from their store, and the recipes are designed by a nutritionist with healthy and hearty family meals in mind. Kids are encouraged to get involved with preparing the recipes, building skills and coming together through food.
The NHS social prescribing team at Foundry Healthcare Lewes played the vital role of identifying the participating families, using their deep understanding of clients’ circumstances to refer those that would benefit most from the scheme.
The community meal kits aim to increase families’ access to healthy and nutritious meals, offering an alternative and more dignified model of food support to traditional emergency food provision. Over the course of the 6-month pilot, we will monitor participants’ perceptions of their ability to provide sufficient and healthy meals for their family, their confidence and motivation to cook healthy meals, and sense of wellbeing. They will also have the opportunity to feed back on the recipes.
The recipes change with the seasons, but some example meals that our participants have been cooking so far include: chickpea and lentil tagine; halloumi and rainbow veg paella; and mushroom and lentil shepherds pie.
The meal kits are also available to buy at Seasons in Lewes, with a 20% discount for those eligible for Healthy Start.
The Seasons community meal kits programme is funded by Lewes District Food Partnership, through the Household Support Fund.
Seasons is also running a meal kits programme from its Forest Row location in collaboration with Uckfield food bank. Twelve families are being supported fortnightly.