The UK government has announced a new policy aimed at promoting the sale of healthy foods and drinks in collaboration with industry manufacturers and supermarkets.
This initiative is part of an upcoming ten-year Health Plan designed to reduce obesity rates and alleviate pressures on the National Health Service (NHS).
According to a statement from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the policy “will set full transparency and accountability around the food that businesses are selling and encourage healthier products.” This strategy aims to create a level playing field for all stakeholders involved.
Moreover, the government plans to establish targets to enhance the “healthiness” of foods and drinks in partnership with the Food Strategy Advisory Board, a committee comprising government and industry representatives.
The DHSC indicated that the new standard will “make the average shopping basket of goods sold slightly healthier.” Participants will have the flexibility to choose how to implement this change, including options like reformulating products, adjusting recipes, altering store layouts, offering discounts on healthy items, or revising loyalty schemes to encourage healthier choices.
Citing unnamed public health experts, the DHSC noted that obesity rates in the UK could potentially be halved if individuals who are overweight reduced their daily calorie intake by 216 calories.
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting stated, “This government’s ambition for kids today is for them to be part of the healthiest generation of children ever.”
Streeting added, “Our brilliant supermarkets already do so much work for our communities and are trying to make their stores healthier, and we want to work with them and other businesses to create a level playing field. Through our new healthy food standard, we will make the healthy choice the easy choice because prevention is better than cure.”
Action on Salt argues that this new policy should include financial penalties for non-compliance, but commended the shift from voluntary to mandatory efforts.
Sonia Pombo, head of impact and research at the UK advocacy group, remarked, “We welcome the government’s recognition that supermarkets have a powerful role to play in shaping healthier food environments,” further noting that “voluntary efforts have repeatedly fallen short.” She advocates for a “bold” and “enforceable policy.”
On a similar note, Tesco CEO Ken Murphy expressed his support, stating that the UK’s largest supermarket chain has long called for the mandatory reporting of healthy food and drink sales among grocers and food businesses.
“All food businesses have a critical part to play in providing good quality, affordable, and healthy food. At Tesco, we have measured and published our own healthier food sales for a number of years now – we believe it is key to more evidence-led policy and better-targeted health interventions,” Murphy asserted.
Simon Roberts, CEO of Sainsbury’s, commented, “Today’s announcement from government is an important and positive step forward in helping the nation to eat well. We need a level playing field across the entirety of our food sector for these actions to have a real and lasting impact.”
Katharine Jenner, a director at the Obesity Health Alliance, stated that ensuring a level playing field around healthy food choices would benefit supermarkets’ profits by eliminating what she described as a “first mover disadvantage.”
Jenner emphasized, “This is a fair and evidence-based prescription for better health; big businesses urgently need the government to level the playing field to help them focus on selling products that help people live well.”
Nomad Foods, known for the Goodfella’s and Aunt Bessie’s brands, stated that it has been voluntarily reporting the proportion of its healthy food product sales since 2017.
A spokesperson for the company affirmed, “We welcome today’s move by the UK government requiring all food businesses to report on the sales of healthier products. We believe that industry-wide reporting would increase healthy innovation and reformulation, driving the sale and consumption of tasty, nutritious food, thereby enhancing the UK’s food system.”