Earlier this year, a group of 10 friends and neighbours from the Turkish community gathered in a home in Hackney. The day, hosted by Nilay Erdem, had food, games, laughter and friendship. All components of a good party.
But this wasn’t just any party. Nilay, a member of the City and Hackney Community Health Champion (CHC) programme, created this day and its activities to show that balanced diet and nutrition doesn’t have to be expensive, time-consuming, or overwhelming.
Each year, the Community Health Champions choose four priorities on which to focus. Then, they participate in training, peer support sessions and forums around these topics to discover information, resources and how to better talk about them with people in their communities.
Nilay used the training from one of those priorities – Diet, Nutrition and Food Poverty – as the foundation of her event.
She invited friends to share a table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with snacks in between. For each meal, Nilay prepared a selection of dishes grouped by food type — for example, eggs and yoghurt for protein, wholegrain bread and oats for carbohydrates, and salads and fruit for vegetables and fibre.
Guests were then asked to prepare their own plates based on what they had learned about healthy proportions from the NHS Eatwell Guide. The day also included a short presentation on balanced eating and a quiz to reinforce the key lessons in a fun and interactive way.
“I’m not a good cook – my husband does most of it – so I used very basic ingredients and chose things that didn’t take a lot of time, like overnight oats, boiled eggs and a tuna and bean salad,” said Nilay. “Many people said, ‘oh, these are so easy to make.’ It took the mystery out of how to cook. We have a WhatsApp group and after, people kept asking for more recipes.”
While most people understood the ideas around balanced eating, Nilay knew it was important for people to try and put them into action.
“There are certain things people already know – basic things like staying hydrated (drinking 8 glasses of water),” said Nilay. “But we worked on the practical things. One thing that people were interested and didn’t know about was portion control and how to use your palm for size. During the meals, people practised making plates of food using these ideas.”
At the end of the day, Nilay asked people to choose one thing they might do differently and to try it for a month or so. One person said she would try and drink more water, another said he wanted to add more plants to his diet. A third person wanted to cut back on coffee.
“It was so good that people saw that together, we can really shift how we think about our wellbeing,” said Nilay. “Also, I didn’t ask people to make big changes – that’s not realistic. Instead, we focused on smaller, achievable things and what was so good was that people felt how much of a difference that could make.”
Learn more about the City & Hackney Community Health Champions programme here: https://vchackney.org/services/communitychampions/