Healthier Food Environment – A multimedia exhibition depicting the reality of Northern Ireland’s food environment and a collective vision for its future was revealed today by Safefood. The exhibition, ‘Appetite for Change’, brings together work from conversations hosted by Safefood across communities in late 2025 and marks a pivotal moment in the ‘Talk About Food’ campaign, showcasing how local communities want to transform the food landscape that surrounds them.
Speaking of the campaign at the exhibition in Belfast, Joanne Uí Chrualaoich, newly Appointed CEO at Safefood, said: “The single most important thing we want people to take from these illustrations is that there is a real, collective appetite for change. Our food environment is everything around us, from the shops on our high street to the digital ads on our phones, and currently, it means making a healthy choice is often much harder to make. These illustrations show that people from diverse communities and backgrounds all want a system that supports their health rather than working against it, with more affordable, accessible, healthy food for everyone.”
The series of 24 illustrations, created by award-winning artist Steve Doogan, bring to life the insights of people across the island who participated in Safefood’s Citizen Engagement workshops in late 2025. These visuals highlight a landscape currently “overflowing” with cheap, heavily marketed unhealthy options and contrast it with a community-led vision for change.
Common themes identified by Northern Ireland participants included a yearning for “main streets of the past” with local grocers and butchers, a call for stricter regulation on marketing to children, and a desire for supermarkets to be redesigned to make healthy food more visible.
The exhibition, which took place on Wednesday 28th January at the Skainos Centre in East Belfast, marked the official conclusion of a year-long engagement programme with local communities. The event was hosted by the BBC Health Correspondent Marie-Louise Connolly and featured a high-level expert panel discussion on the policy and societal changes required to achieve this vision. The panel included : Amelia Lake, Professor of Public Health Nutrition at Teesside University; Jenny Irvine, CEO of ARC Healthy Living Centre, Irvinestown, Fermanagh; Ciaran O’Neill, Professor at Queen’s University Belfast; and Helen McAvoy, Director of Policy at All Island Institute of Public Health.
“By working together; government, communities, partners and citizens, can create a food environment that supports health, protects all especially children, and makes the healthy choice the easy choice.’ Joanne continued.
The exhibition and accompanying report aim to stimulate wider conversations among the public and policymakers. By highlighting lived experiences and structural constraints, Safefood seeks to ensure that future policy discussions regarding Northern Ireland’s food systems are rooted in the views of its citizens.
