Supermarkets set to fight the good fight on obesity

The Government wants supermarkets, as well as food and drink brands, to be on the front line of the fight against “Fat Britain” but the alcohol sector – along with the advertising and marketing industry – has breathed a sigh of relief after a potential ban on booze ads has been dropped.

The NHS 10-year health plan, published today, is designed to seize the opportunities provided by new technologies, medicines, and innovations to deliver better care for all patients – wherever they live and whatever they earn – and better value for taxpayers.

It is making three big shifts to how the NHS works, with more care available on people’s doorsteps and in their homes; new technology “liberating” staff from admin and allowing people to manage their care as easily as they bank or shop online; and finally a pledge to reach patients earlier and make the healthy choice the easy choice.

Supermarkets and food brands will sit at the heart of the strategy, to encourage people to make healthier food choices.

The move aims to make the average shopping basket of food slightly healthier. Businesses will be given the freedom to decide how to meet the standard by reformulating products, changing store layouts, offering discounts on healthy foods, or changing loyalty schemes to promote healthier foods.

The document states: “People are living too long in ill health, the gap in healthy life expectancy between rich and poor is growing and nearly 1 in 5 children leave primary school with obesity.

“Our overall goal is to halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions, while increasing it for everyone, and to raise the healthiest generation of children ever. This will boost our health, but also ensure the future sustainability of the NHS and support economic growth.

“[We will] launch a moonshot to end the obesity epidemic. We will restrict junk food advertising targeted at children, ban the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to under 16-year-olds, reform the soft drinks industry levy to drive reformulation; and introduce mandatory health food sales reporting for all large companies in the food sector.

“We will use that reporting to set new mandatory targets on the average healthiness of sales.”

Even so, the standard will apply only to large retailers, not smaller convenience stores or takeaway outlets and it is not yet clear what penalties there will be on businesses that fail to produce significant changes in consumer behaviour.