Amid the wider moves by the government to tackle the obesity crisis in the UK, Lidl GB has announced a commitment to increase sales of healthy and healthier products to at least 85% of its total sales, based on tonnage volume, by 2025.
The discounter said its nutrition teams have developed a bespoke nutrient profiling system (NPS) based on Public Health England’s nutrient criteria for front-of-pack traffic light labelling, focusing on fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt, which ranks all products as healthy, healthier or least healthy.
As part of the new commitment, Lidl will assess over 200 lines each year that can be improved to meet the healthy or healthier criteria. The retailer stated that it will also be engaging with suppliers to help it boost its portfolio of healthier products.
The move comes as discounter invests in its ‘Get Fresh’ initiative, which aims to increase the range of healthy products, like fresh meat, fruit and vegetables. Its stores are continuing to be upgraded with larger chillers that can stock more than 100 new products on shelves.
Lidl is also prioritising placing fresh, healthy products at the start of the customer’s store journey, with new lines located prominently at the front of the store. The programme will be completed by September this year.
Christian Härtnagel, CEO at Lidl GB, commented: “At Lidl, we prove that eating healthy does not need to break the bank. Our competitive low prices across all our ranges, particularly fruit and vegetables, are marketing leading and ensure customers can access healthy food all year round.
“Our Healthy Eating Pledge is our most ambitious healthy eating target yet and is focused on helping families make healthier choices when they shop with us, without compromising on price.”
Lidl’s latest commitments are in addition to steps it has previously taken to promote healthy eating amongst children, including the removal of cartoon characters from its own brand cereal ranges, and in 2014 becoming the first supermarket in Britain to remove sweets and chocolates from its checkouts. Lidl was also one of the founder signatories to the Food Foundation’s Peas Please pledge in 2017 and committed to running more discounts on vegetables.
This year, Lidl has gone further and strengthened its existing pledges by setting an additional target to increase the sale of fresh fruit and veg by 35% by 2026 and will report actual sales annually.
The discounter has committed to annually reporting its progress towards its healthy sales commitment and stated that it will monitor sales to help drive nutritional improvement across its full product range.
Last month, Morrisons became the latest supermarket group to be targeted by shareholders over the amount of unhealthy food it sells. ShareAction, a charity that works with institutional investors to promote responsible investment, wrote to the chain’s Chairman Andrew Higginson calling on the business to boost sales of healthier food and drink products.
Tesco has also faced similar shareholder pressure, and back in March, it committed to 65% of the total sales in its UK and Irish stores coming from healthy products as defined by the government’s nutrient profiling model.
