Scottish Diet Action Plan - General Background
The Scottish Diet Action Plan (SDAP) is one of the country's best developed and most mature health improvement programmes.
The plan, 'Eating for Health: A Diet Action Plan for Scotland', was published by the then Scottish Office in 1996, following a two-year inquiry, involving stakeholders from agriculture, the retail industry, public health and consumer interest groups.
The SDAP sets out the various steps the key players can take on a voluntary basis to improve the Scottish diet. It was shaped by the publication in 1994 of a series of targets for dietary improvement in Scotland to be delivered over the decade to 2005.To meet these targets the plan made a list of key recommendations.
The SDAP acknowledged that improving Scotland's diet through the ongoing implementation of the plan would be a lengthy and complex task, but would bring significant improvements to the nations health. The effort had to be seen as a long term investment however as it may well take 20-30 years to fully reap the benefits.
The plan widely recognised that dietary improvement was not achievable without tackling poverty and deprivation which underlines so much of Scotland's poor dietary and nutritional status.
In 2003, a wider framework for action to improve the health of the people of Scotland was laid out in the Scottish Executive's Health Improvement paper titled 'Improving Health in Scotland - The Challenge', a strategic framework to support the processes required to speed up the progress of health improvement and highlighted further actions.
In 2006, Health Scotland produced a review report that examined the progress, impacts, successes and challenges that arose from the implementation of the 1996 Scottish Diet Action Plan.
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