North Yorkshire as a whole performs well for fruit and vegetable consumption. However it is estimated that approximately 60% of the North Yorkshire population meet the recommended ‘5-a-day’ on a ‘usual day’ and this is likely to be an overestimation as this is self-reported information. In addition North Yorkshire residents appear to consume slightly more vegetables than fruit daily yet for both Selby performs slightly worse than the England average. North Yorkshire also has a lot of ‘green space’ yet only 17.8% of this is used for exercise/health reasons which is slightly lower than the England average, and for a rural county with a lower population density than the England average this is poor.

The North Yorkshire Veg Cities campaign aims to link food waste and consumers, community groups and local business to increase vegetable consumption and promote a variety of vegetables in all settings.