In an open letter to Wes Streeting, the Health and Social Care Secretary, Tesco and three of its health charity partners are urging the government to make healthier food sales reporting mandatory for all supermarkets and major food businesses.
At its Health Charity Partnership summit last week, Tesco Group CEO Ken Murphy met with CEOs from Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK to discuss how they can help people lead longer, healthier lives. With obesity costing the NHS around £6.5bn a year, Tesco and its charity partners are calling on the Government to implement mandatory healthier food sales reporting, using a set of agreed and consistent health metrics, to improve the health of the nation.
Obesity increases the risk of cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and other conditions, and Tesco noted that it is essential that the food industry works together to support the government’s approach to preventing ill health. However, with an inconsistency in how businesses report on the healthiness of their food and drink sales, the retailer highlighted that it is difficult to assess the progress that is being made across the industry.
Tesco stated that it remains committed to taking a leading role in supporting its customers to lead healthier lives and tackling the barriers that they face, including affordability, lack of access to healthy food, or a lack of time, knowledge or inspiration when making healthier choices. It suggests that increased transparency in healthier food sales reporting could support more evidence-led policy and better-targeted health interventions.
Tesco is on track to meet its 65% healthier sales target by the end of this year, which is being achieved through interventions including voluntarily removing multi-buy promotions on less healthy products and the reformulation of own-brand products to reduce salt, fat and sugar.
“There are more people living with obesity in the UK than ever before. Tesco, along with the food industry, has a critical part to play in supporting preventive health measures, through giving access to affordable, healthier, quality food,” said Murphy.
“Through our partnership with Diabetes UK, Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation, we have shown that collaboration can drive meaningful change. But to truly support public health, we need consistent, transparent reporting across the industry. We urge the UK Government to take this important step forward to make healthier food sales reporting mandatory.”
Dr Charmaine Griffiths, Chief Executive of the British Heart Foundation, added: “There is no doubt that mandatory reporting on healthier food sales will drive improvements across the food industry, and it is great to see a leading retailer like Tesco already transparently sharing their progress.
“We urge governments across the UK to adopt this measure as soon as possible. Doing so would mark a major step forward towards a world in which people’s hearts are healthier, for longer.”
Meanwhile, Michelle Mitchell, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, commented: Supermarkets can play a major role in supporting people to make healthy choices, and as Tesco is showing, we need government action to ensure this happens across the UK.
“As well as fully implementing legislation to restrict the advertising and price promotion of unhealthy food and drink, the UK Government must go further by introducing mandatory reporting on healthy food sales. These steps will ensure that everyone can live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.”
