About Eat Well, Your Way

To complement the Eatwell Guide, we have developed Eat Well, Your Way to provide a trusted source of information. Eat Well, Your Way can be used to help people in Scotland make healthier food and drink choices in the context of their real life.

As well as information on what a healthy balanced diet looks like and why it is important, Eat Well, Your Way has practical advice and help with how to make small, manageable changes, in practical ways that suit them.

Anyone who is involved in the delivery of healthy eating information to the public in Scotland may use Eat Well, Your Way as a source of information to deliver consistent advice and messages around diet, or to signpost members of the public for their own personal use.

Getting the right information

When you enter the website, you can choose to see advice and tips, depending on the circumstances of the user/user group. To use this option, click start on the What’s your way? button, and answer three quick questions.

If you/the user would prefer not to answer the questions upon entering the site, and answer them later, you can scroll down the homepage and choose to enter the Shopping, In the Kitchen or Eating out sections.

Using Eat Well, Your Way

There are three main sections within Eat Well, Your Way:

• Shopping - Planning and shopping are good places to start making some healthier choices, and can help people get the most from their money and help the environment.
• In the kitchen - Advice and tips on equipment and ingredients to keep in kitchen cupboards, and how to cook in ways that are cheaper and healthier.
• Eating out - Most of us buy and eat food outside of our homes regularly. This section provides information on how to make small changes to usual habits that could make a big difference.

There is no ‘right’ way to use Eat Well, Your Way. This resource can be used in any way that is useful to you in your practice, or the individual user.

Ready to make a change?

If the user would like to make a change, it helps to work on small, manageable goals. The 'Making a change' section provides top tips to help users to make small changes and stick to them. 

If you are working with users or groups, to help them make healthier food and drink choices, you might find the following information on the MAP behaviour change process useful.

To change what or how you eat, there are 3 main things that a person can do: 

• get Motivated
• take Action
• use (or avoid) Prompts that make you eat in a particular way.

This approach is called MAP, and it’s used by the NHS. MAP is based on what we know about the kinds of things that help people change their behaviour.

Motivation

Try asking your client or group to:

• Imagine what things will be like in the future for you if you change what you eat now and if you don’t. Think about the consequences of changing or not changing (e.g. for your health, your mood or your social life)
• Get some reliable information about the benefits of changing. You can find information about the benefits of making healthy changes to what you eat here
• Think about the people around you. If you made a change, would it set a good example for them? Making a change could have a positive impact on your friends and family.

Action

Try asking you client or group to:

• Set a clear goal for what you want to achieve. Make specific plans about what you are going to do and when you are going to do it
• Think about what might make it difficult to stick to your plan and work out things you could do that would help.
• Record what you're eating. Writing down what you’re eating is one of the best ways to stay on track.   

Prompts

Try asking your client or group to:

• Put things you want to eat more of somewhere you can see and easily reach them so that you are prompted to eat them. Put things you are trying not to eat out of sight or get rid of them completely so it’s easier to resist temptation
• Leave yourself reminders about the changes you are trying to make (e.g. a note on the fridge, a sticker on your purse, a shopping bag in your coat pocket etc). Noticing them in the moment will remind you to act.
• Try to do the same thing regularly to build new habits. You might have to do something 20 or 30 times before it starts to feel ‘normal’.

For more information on MAP, you can visit NHS Education for Scotland:

Behaviour change for health | NHS Education for Scotland

Who are we?

Food Standards Scotland can help you make informed choices about what and where to eat.

• We work with Scottish Government, separate from Government Ministers and the food and drink industries. We provide advice which is impartial and based on robust science and data
• Our remit covers all aspects of the food chain which can impact on public health – aiming to protect consumers from food safety risks and promote healthy eating
• We always have the consumer's best interests at heart and aim to be your go-to source of information when it comes to healthy eating and food safety