You can’t have missed the news that the UK is facing a health crisis. More than a quarter of British adults are living with obesity, 5.6 million now have diabetes, and a huge part of the problem is our food landscape.
As the UK’s biggest retailer, Tesco has a responsibility here – and it’s one it takes seriously. In 2015, Tesco became the first supermarket to remove sweets from checkouts, and it ended almost all multibuy promotions on high fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) products in 2022, meaning customers don’t have to buy more than they need to get great value. Tesco is committed to making its stores across the UK the place to go for affordable, healthy and sustainable food. But, clearly, we need to see further action from across the food industry as a whole.
Keen to play its part, Tesco, in partnership with the Guardian Labs, invited leading experts in the fields of nutrition and psychology, as well as representatives from charities, food suppliers and NGOs, to sit down and thrash out the challenges and opportunities for change – and I was lucky enough to be in the room, as moderator.
“I believe that, as an industry, we agree on about 80% of things,” said Ashwin Prasad, Tesco’s chief commercial officer, kicking off the roundtable. “We spend a lot of time defending our differences, so let’s put our collective effort into the 80% that can drive meaningful change.”
Here are my key takeaways from the morning’s discussion.
Focus on families
As a parent, I appreciated that the first topic to be addressed was the impact on our kids. Simon O’Neill, director of health intelligence at Diabetes UK, drew gasps from the table as he revealed a rise in type 2 diabetes, previously known as “adult-onset”, among children. “We’re seeing six-year-olds with type 2. It’s becoming normalised,” he told us.
Everyone agreed that exhausted parents are not being helped by the use of cartoon characters and marketing towards kids on HFSS products – something to which I can attest. But it was especially interesting to learn how the challenges change as they get older. “Adolescence is a risky time in terms of developing mental health conditions,” explained psychologist Kimberley Wilson. “Just as children’s brains are particularly vulnerable, they get more independence and shift their diets.” Elaine Hindal, chief executive of the British Nutrition Foundation, agreed, explaining that adolescents have the worst diet of any age group. They are setting themselves up for an adulthood of ill health, and it’s not their fault.
“Kids want to be healthy,” agreed James Toop, chief executive of youth movement Bite Back. “But they switch on their phones and see YouTubers promoting energy drinks. Fast food companies sponsor youth clubs and grassroots football. It’s their cultural wallpaper.”
Power and influence
We all know that celebrities wield huge power and influence over our cultural landscape – so it was fascinating when the topic of conversation moved on to how this applies to our diets.
“When Kim Kardashian announced she drinks celery juice, it created a celery shortage,” said John Shropshire, chairman of fresh food supplier G’s Fresh. But as much as we’d love to see vegetables promoted in this attention-grabbing way more often (kale sponsoring Love Island, anyone?), the sad truth is, fruit and veg suppliers just don’t have the capital – unlike HFSS brands, which spend millions of pounds on online and social media advertising each year, according to Toop. “Of the top 10 global manufacturers selling in the UK, 70% of it is unhealthy, which generated £12bn in 2022,” he explained. “We need a fiscal lever to break those cycles. Perhaps a marketing spend cap?”
Thankfully it’s not all doom and gloom. Veg Power’s Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign is an example of advertising healthy food really effectively. “That is a brilliant proof of concept,” said Anna Taylor, executive director of the Food Foundation. “Because it shows that if you do advertise veg to kids, and combine that with education in schools, it works.”
Education, education, education
One of the most powerful moments came when dietitian Linia Patel lamented the lack of food education, which she said is desperately needed as dietary inequalities widen between socioeconomic groups.
Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food is running a pilot with 10,000 kids in secondary schools, hoping to reach 80,000 by September. “But it shouldn’t be a celebrity’s job to do that,” said Alison Corfield, head of social impact and sustainability at the Jamie Oliver Group. “It should be the government’s job.”
Tesco is also working with schools through the Stronger Starts programme, a £5m grant to fund nutritious food and healthy activities. “Our aim is to help five million kids by 2026,” said Prasad.
Data driven
In our digital world, data is king – so I was intrigued to hear how it is being used in the battle for a healthier food landscape. The Food Data Transparency Partnership (FDTP) was a big topic of conversation. If you’re unfamiliar with it (as I was), it’s an agreement between government and industry to improve the sustainability and healthiness of food and drink through better data. But there was unanimous frustration around the table that it’s not mandatory.
Some manufacturers are taking positive steps with reformulation; altering the composition of products to improve their nutritional profile (Tesco has taken 97bn calories out of own-brand foods by doing this), but many more would do so if they had to report on it. Keith Galbraith, global customer director for Nestlé, acknowledged the problem, saying Nestlé would welcome regulation. “We have taken some steps with reformulation and labelling, but it has to be a level playing field,” he said. “That’s why data transparency is important. In the commercial world, what gets measured gets delivered.”
Tesco’s healthy sales target is a great example. Its goal of increasing sales of healthy products to 65% of all sales by 2025 is on track, partly thanks to annual progress reports.
A taxing issue
The parallel between cigarettes and HFSS foods came up time and time again; in this case, the lesson to take from tobacco was that higher taxes reduce consumption. While Taylor admitted that taxing HFSS foods might be an unpopular policy, there are ways of making it politically acceptable. “The revenue can be used to subsidise nutritious food for lower-income families, perhaps through existing schemes like free school meals and Healthy Start,” she said.
Barbara Crowther, children’s food campaign coordinator for Sustain, said the wheels are in motion. “There is a coalition of health organisations doing outreach to forward-thinking businesses like Tesco, who have seen how the soft drinks industry levy has been a powerful lever of change,” she said. “No politicians want to talk about tax right now, but it will be on the agenda next year. Let’s be ready.”
Changing minds
The panel was in agreement that one way to get politicians on board was to demonstrate the economic impact. Ian Walker, executive director of policy information and communications at Cancer Research UK, told the room that obesity is linked to 13 different types of cancer, and CRUK modelling shows there will be 21 million UK adults who are overweight or obese by 2040. “The implications of that, in terms of productivity, are huge,” he pointed out.
Productivity is often overlooked in this conversation. “We always talk about how policies around obesity will affect the NHS, which is missing the point,” said Charlotte Refsum, director of health policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. “Think about how many people you could keep in work, the tax receipts we’d get from that. We’re pushing for a different approach to funding health services: prioritising prevention. We should think of people’s health as a national asset. It’s human capital.”
The government’s to-do list
For change to happen, everyone agreed we needed legislation. And as our morning drew to a close, panel members shared their final insights.
John Maingay, director of policy at the British Heart Foundation, again pointed to anti-smoking initiatives as a template. “Interventions on packaging and advertising made a huge difference with smoking, although action lagged far behind the evidence,” he said. “We’re seeing the same with obesity, which is overtaking smoking as the leading driver of preventable heart attacks and strokes. The government has to introduce incentives to break the junk food cycle.”
Corfield suggested the creation of an innovation prize. Although she added that new MPs must be aware of HFSS lobbyists. “The food lobby is the most powerful lobby in the UK,” she said. “We invite ministers to our Ministry of Food centres, but fast food chains are inviting them to Wimbledon.”
One thing’s for sure: legal rulings work better than recommendations. “The next government will see the evidence that, where legislation has happened, it has created a meaningful shift,” said Prasad. “It must prioritise the regulation of HFSS multibuys and mandatory reporting. And the food industry must make healthy choices affordable, accessible and attractive.” He maintains that we can be optimistic. “People want to be part of the solution. Let’s help them.”
While the stats around our nation’s health can make for depressing reading, particularly when it comes to our kids, it’s encouraging to see so many brilliant brains working behind the scenes to improve the food landscape. Everyone deserves access to delicious, affordable, fresh whole foods. I hope other retailers follow Tesco’s lead, and the government will prioritise legislation to improve the health of our families, our planet and our economy.
Find out more about how Tesco is working to improve the health of the nation at tesco.com/better-baskets
