Emergency service workers carry some of the heaviest burdens in our society. They work long, unpredictable shifts; experience trauma and emotional pressure; and frequently face verbal or physical abuse. Their resilience is remarkable, but it’s not limitless. What often gets overlooked is how their daily food habits, shaped by stress and necessity, can unintentionally make their already demanding roles even harder.

The Real Cost of Stress — 

• According to the Laura Hyde Foundation, emergency workers made 11,654 contacts for mental health support in 2024 — more than one every hour — and a staggering 6,199 reported suicidal thoughts or behaviours. Business in the News+1
• Abuse toward frontline staff has surged: in 2024–25, there were 22,536 recorded incidents of violence and aggression against ambulance workers — a 15% increase on the previous year. The Guardian
• Mental health leave is also rising: in just one force (West Midlands), 1,162 officers were signed off for stress, anxiety, depression or PTSD between April 2024 and April 2025 — contributing to a national total of 17,152 mental-health-related absences. polfed.org
• In a massive sentiment survey of shift-based workers between April 2024 and April 2025, emergency services staff ranked among the “most unhappy” in the UK. Workplace Wellbeing Professional

These statistics paint a stark picture: frontline workers are deeply stretched physically, mentally, and emotionally.

The Overlooked Role of Sleep & Fatigue — Enter the SAFER Program

One of the most consequential but often ignored issues for emergency workers is sleep and fatigue. Chronic tiredness doesn’t just impair performance, it erodes wellbeing.

That’s where the SAFER programme, run by Oscar Kilo (the National Police Wellbeing Service), comes in. oscarkilo.org.uk+1

• Designed in collaboration with the University of Surrey, SAFER aims to detect undiagnosed sleep disorders (like sleep apnoea or shift-work sleep disorder) among police staff. oscarkilo.org.uk+1
• Previous similar programmes found that over a third of active-duty participants were at risk of a sleep disorder — but didn’t know it. oscarkilo.org.uk
• When such programs were rolled out, they had serious impact: in one fire department, long-term disability days dropped by nearly 50%, and the odds of on-duty injury decreased by 24%. oscarkilo.org.uk+1
• The screening is anonymous and takes only a few minutes, making it more accessible for busy staff. oscarkilo.org.uk

This all underscores how fatigue is not just a personal problem, it's an occupational risk, deeply linked to shift patterns, stress, and long working hours.

How Food Habits Make (or Break) Resilience

When people are over-tired and emotionally drained, their food decisions tend not to be about nourishment or self-care, they’re about survival. For many frontline workers:

• Breaks are rushed or skipped.
• Food is often eaten in a car, corridor, or between calls.
• The quickest thing to reach for tends to be ultra-processed, highly convenient, and designed to “fill the gap.”

But these “quick fixes” don’t necessarily support long-term resilience. Instead, they can amplify:

• energy crashes
• mood instability
• irritability
• difficulty winding down
• shallow or poor-quality sleep

In other words: they make recovery harder just when rest and recovery are most needed.

A Simple But Powerful Shift: Reclaiming Food as a Source of Support

This is where SimpliciB’s approach matters. Rather than pushing complicated rules or performance-food culture, SimpliciB focuses on simple, realistic, and emotionally supportive food habits that fit around demanding shifts.

Some small but meaningful changes might include:

• Micro rituals: a very quick “pause and eat” moment, even if it’s just 5 minutes in a locker or car.
• Prepared simplicity: real food options that don’t take hours to make but feel grounding, things that anchor you rather than just fill.
• Reconnection to self: using food as a moment of calm, not just survival but something that helps with mental balance, not just physical hunger.

When food becomes a tool for emotional resilience, it helps frontline workers to:

• feel steadier under pressure
• recover more effectively between shifts
• reduce mental and emotional fatigue
• support better sleep, even when rest is limited

Why This Matters and Why We Need to Talk About It

Emergency and frontline workers already sacrifice so much for other people. They deserve systems including how we talk about food, fatigue, and self-care that actually support them.

By highlighting how ultra-processed, “grab-and-go” food habits intersect with stress, sleep, and resilience, we can start a conversation about practical wellbeing support that actually fits their lives.

Change doesn’t have to be big or glamorous. Sometimes, it can be as simple as:

• rethinking the way we pause for food
• offering quick, real alternatives to UPF
• giving people permission (and tools) to make small changes that feel manageable

SimpliciB is here to help frontline workers reclaim food as a haven not just a stop-gap. Because when you look after yourself, you’re better able to show up for everyone else.

When Food Choices Aren’t Just About Taste: How Marketing Shapes What Children & Young People Eat

Children and young adults today are growing up in a food environment designed to capture their attention, not necessarily to nourish their wellbeing. Every scroll, video, and trip to the supermarket brings a wave of cleverly designed messages that push brightly packaged snacks, cartoon-covered cereals, and “fun” treats promising happiness, energy, or belonging.

It’s no wonder parents often feel overwhelmed. How are you supposed to make good choices when the odds are stacked against you from the start?

The Hidden Influence of Food Marketing

Children’s eating habits are being shaped long before they sit down at the dinner table. Across the UK, young people are bombarded by a constant stream of advertising and promotions that normalise less healthy food choices. Research by The Food Foundation shows that children are exposed to around 15 billion online adverts and 3.6 billion TV adverts for foods high in fat, salt, and sugar every year, that’s almost 500 unhealthy food ads every second online.

It only takes a little exposure to make a big difference. One study found that just five minutes of junk-food advertising led children aged 7–15 to consume an average of 130 extra calories that day. The brain responds quickly to visual cues and emotional marketing, especially when linked to colour, music, humour, or familiar characters.

Food companies know this. In 2022 alone, UK manufacturers spent over £55 million on online advertising for products like chocolate, crisps, biscuits and ice-cream, many of them deliberately targeted at children and families. This isn’t just marketing; it’s behaviour design, finely tuned to influence what children crave and what parents feel pressured to buy.

Why It Matters for Wellbeing

Behind the bright packaging lies a deeper concern. When unhealthy food becomes the default, it quietly shapes emotional and physical wellbeing. Young people can experience energy dips, mood swings, fatigue and reduced focus, effects that spill over into school, social life, and confidence.

These marketing tactics also interfere with how children and teens learn to listen to their own bodies. Food is no longer about hunger, connection, or comfort, it’s about image, reward, and impulse. This emotional detachment from food can have long-term effects on self-regulation and stress management.

The issue goes beyond individual health. It’s about fairness. Research from The Food Foundation shows that children from lower-income households are more exposed to unhealthy food marketing and often have fewer affordable, healthier options nearby. When marketing drives preference for foods that are cheap, addictive, and low in nutritional value, it deepens health inequalities across communities.

The Bigger Picture

Advertising restrictions are slowly catching up. The UK is moving toward banning junk-food adverts on TV before 9 pm and placing tighter controls on digital advertising. In fact, eight out of ten adults in the UK support restrictions on junk-food advertising to children. But while these changes are promising, they can’t reverse years of exposure or the deeply ingrained habits created by decades of persuasive marketing.

We’re also seeing a cultural shift, a growing awareness that wellbeing isn’t just about avoiding certain foods, but about reclaiming choice. Food shouldn’t manipulate or shame; it should empower.

Supporting the Next Generation

At SimpliciB, we believe that education and awareness are key to changing this landscape. Our work helps children, young people, and families understand the connection between food, emotional wellbeing, and daily energy. We explore how marketing shapes habits and how to build healthier relationships with food through shared experiences, curiosity, and confidence.

Food should be simple, satisfying, and supportive, not confusing or guilt-laden. By opening up honest conversations about what’s really behind the packagin

g, we can help the next generation make choices that serve their wellbeing, not corporate profit.

Does the UK construction industry actually want to support its people?

Why 'speak up' is replacing 'man up' and what employers must do next

Construction builds the world we live in but the industry’s culture and working conditions have historically left men in construction disproportionately vulnerable to poor mental health. Over the last decade the sector has seen a surge of campaigns, charities and corporate programmes championing a “speak up” culture. The question now is not whether the industry is talking about wellbeing, but how seriously companies are embedding employee wellbeing into the way they operate, measure performance and report on sustainability.

The scale of the problem, the data that should make leaders act

• Occupational suicide and mental-health harms in construction are stark. In 2021 there were 507 suicides recorded among people working in construction, a rate that recent analyses describe as roughly three to four times the national average for other sectors. Lighthouse Charity+1
• Independent research and charity surveys repeatedly find high prevalence of anxiety, depression and stress in the workforce; targeted reviews show elevated rates of PTSD, depression and anxiety among construction workers compared with the general population. PMC+1
• Work-related stress, depression and anxiety continue to be a major cause of workplace illness across Great Britain: the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) reports hundreds of thousands of workers suffering these conditions each year. Tackling mental health in a high-pressure, male-dominated sector must therefore be a major occupational-health priority. HSE

These numbers explain why charities (Mates in Mind, The Lighthouse, others), trade bodies and major contractors now invest in mental-health training, buddy schemes, and awareness campaigns but numbers alone don’t prove the industry has solved the problem.

Are the headlines matched by lasting change?

There is real progress: industry-led initiatives, funded training, and an increase in Mental Health First Aid and wellbeing programmes show a willingness to act. For example, recent charity impact reports show large increases in accredited training uptake and uptake of e-learning modules focused on stress, resilience and suicide prevention. Lighthouse Charity+1

However, persistent high suicide rates and continued survey reports of workers feeling uncomfortable discussing mental health indicate a gap between surface-level activity and systemic change. Common barriers include:

• A workforce that is largely male and often socialised to avoid showing vulnerability.
• Job insecurity, subcontracting, and 'piece-rate' pressures that intensify stress and reduce access to consistent support.
• Site culture, where informal banter can sometimes mask bullying or discourage help-seeking. CITB+1

Why aligning wellbeing with ESG and the UN Goals is business-critical

Wellbeing is not just HR, it sits squarely in the “S” (social) of ESG and maps directly to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) such as Goal 3 — Good Health & Wellbeing and Goal 8 — Decent Work and Economic Growth. Demonstrable action on employee wellbeing reduces absence, protects productivity and protects reputation, all material to investors, clients and tenders that increasingly require robust sustainability reporting. United Nations+1

In the UK, sustainability-reporting regulation is evolving rapidly: the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards and related consultations are pushing companies to disclose social impacts, which will increasingly make worker wellbeing and mental-health metrics part of mainstream corporate disclosure. Firms that treat wellbeing as a compliance, governance and performance issue are likely to gain competitive advantage. GOV.UK+1

What “support” should actually look like (practical, measurable steps)

If an employer truly wants to support employees, actions should move beyond posters and one-off workshops to systemic change. Practical steps include:

1. Leadership & KPIs
   Senior leaders must visibly prioritise wellbeing and include workforce mental-health metrics in board reporting and contractor KPIs. (e.g., training completion, absence rates, employee survey scores).
2. Contractor & Supply-chain Responsibility
   Make wellbeing clauses part of contracts and tender evaluations so subcontractors are incentivised to provide consistent support.
3. Training + Psychological First Aid
   Roll out accredited mental-health first-aider training and supervisor coaching so colleagues can spot and respond to signs of distress. Charities have resources and sector-specific programmes to scale this. Mates in Mind+1
4. Practical protections
   Address job insecurity (clearer contracts, fair payment practices), reduce excessive overtime, and provide route-to-care (EAPs, fast referral to NHS/occupational health).
5. Measure what matters
   Publish wellbeing metrics in sustainability/ESG reports (connect them to SDG targets where possible) and involve workers in designing interventions.

A note on culture, “speak up” is a system, not a slogan

Banter and resilience are valuable, but they shouldn’t be the default substitute for safe systems and accessible mental-health care. “Speak up” must be backed by policies that protect people who raise concerns, confidential support pathways and visible, repeated leadership commitment.

Conclusion! Yes, but only if companies mean it

There’s genuine momentum in the UK construction industry: more training, more charity activity and higher visibility of mental-health issues. But the data show the problem is far from solved. Real support means embedding wellbeing into contracts, KPIs and corporate reporting; aligning programmes with UN SDGs and the UK’s emerging sustainability reporting standards; and treating mental health as a strategic, material risk not just a PR campaign. When companies do that, “speak up” will have the structures and protections needed to replace “man up” for good.