Wales has started work on its first National Food Strategy. Last month, the Welsh Government announced the expert working group that will develop the strategy, alongside four themes that will guide its work: health and wellbeing, food security, the economy and rural development, and the environment. It also set out three initial areas for deeper exploration: the Welsh meat supply chain, expanding edible horticulture and food in primary schools.

At Nesta, our healthy life mission is focused on tackling obesity by creating a healthier food environment. So we are particularly interested in what the strategy could mean for diets and health across Wales. From this perspective, there is a lot to welcome in the plans. Obesity and type 2 diabetes are explicitly recognised as challenges, alongside an acknowledgement that our diets are shaped by the food system rather than simply being a matter of individual choice.

There are strong foundations to build on. As the strategy takes shape, here are five things we think will be important to deliver better outcomes across Wales.

The strategy aims to ‘prevent and reverse escalating trends in diet-related illnesses, including obesity and type 2 diabetes’. The next step is to be clearer about what scale of improvement Wales should aim for, and by when.

Clear goals can help ensure the scale of action matches the ambition. A strategy aiming for a small reduction in obesity might require very different policies from one seeking to halve it. Setting clear outcomes across all four themes can also help keep them in balance, preventing some areas from overshadowing others as the strategy develops.

Measurable changes in obesity prevalence can take years to emerge, so the strategy will also need measures that show whether diets are improving in the meantime. The UK government’s proposed healthy food standard would require large food businesses to report on and improve the healthiness of their sales and could provide valuable new data if adopted in Wales. This would need to be complemented by other data sources to fill gaps, including food bought from smaller businesses, and to build a more complete picture of how diets are changing across Wales.

A national strategy will inevitably identify more policies and interventions than it can pursue at once. Rather than producing a long list of actions that add up to little, the challenge is to focus resources and attention on those most likely to make a meaningful contribution to the strategy’s goals.

The initial deep dives into school food, edible horticulture and the Welsh meat supply chain are useful places to start exploring some of these questions. As the strategy develops, it should consider which specific policies within these areas are likely to deliver the best outcomes, but also whether these areas offer the greatest opportunities to achieve the strategy’s wider goals. In both cases, choices should be informed by the strength of evidence, likely contribution to outcomes, cost and feasibility.

At Nesta, we used this approach in our blueprint for halving obesity: drawing on the best available evidence to model the population-level impact of different interventions using the same metric, allowing them to be compared on a like-for-like basis. Applying this kind of approach across the strategy could help identify which interventions are likely to make the greatest contribution to its goals.

Prioritisation should also consider where action is best taken. Much of the food system operates across borders, so Wales should work with other UK governments where coordinated action can achieve more. Policies aimed at large food businesses are an obvious example: because most operate across the UK, a consistent approach across nations could increase their reach and make implementation simpler for businesses. But more broadly, this shouldn’t stand in the way of Wales being prepared to lead in any area where acting independently makes sense or could deliver change more quickly.

Often the strategy’s goals will reinforce each other. A healthier food system can also be more sustainable, resilient and economically successful. But not always.

Supporting Welsh producers, improving diets, keeping food affordable and reducing environmental impacts can sometimes pull policy in different directions. Public investment in growing Wales’s food and drink industry, for example, could support economic goals while having very different implications for health depending on which products and businesses benefit.

It’s good to see these potential tensions explicitly recognised in the plans for developing the strategy. This is another reason clear, measurable goals matter. They provide a framework for making those choices. Where possible, different options should be assessed against the same outcomes, making clear who benefits, who bears the costs and what is being traded off. Where a genuine trade-off remains, the strategy should be explicit about which goal it is prioritising and why.

Transforming the food system will take time. A long-term vision is important, but the strategy should also set out practical steps that can be taken now and over the coming years to make early progress.

For health, that means acting now on the parts of the food system that have the most influence over our diets. While the strategy’s initial deep dives into school food, edible horticulture and the Welsh meat supply chain may make valuable contributions to other strategy goals, they are less likely to offer the greatest opportunities to improve population health in the near term. Large supermarkets account for 90% of food bought to eat at home in Wales, so policies that improve the healthiness of the food they sell present a powerful lever for delivering change at scale. Alongside this, Wales can take a test-and-learn approach to developing new approaches across the food system, trialling what works and helping to build a system that works with how people actually behave, before scaling successful approaches over time.

Combining action at scale now with experimentation for the future can provide a practical pathway towards the longer-term food system Wales wants to create.

A strategy will only make a difference if it leads to action that would not otherwise have happened, backed by clear responsibility and the resources to deliver it. There are useful lessons from Scotland here. There was broad support for putting the Good Food Nation approach on a statutory footing, creating legal duties around food planning and accountability. But a recent analysis of Scotland’s Good Food Nation Plan highlighted concerns that the plan largely brings together existing policies rather than setting out significant new action, alongside questions about resources, timescales and responsibility for delivery.

Wales has an opportunity to learn from that experience. Its strategy should consider whether legislation or other statutory mechanisms could help secure action, while going beyond bringing existing policies together. It should set out what will be done differently, who will be responsible for delivering it, and ensure its ambitions are matched by the resources needed to achieve them.

Getting this right, alongside clear goals, evidence-based prioritisation and an honest approach to trade-offs, could turn an ambitious strategy into meaningful change to Wales’s food system. Improving diets and health must be central to that ambition, backed by meaningful action to deliver better outcomes. At Nesta, we’re hopeful about what the food strategy could bring, and look forward to supporting it as it develops.