Amid growing government and shareholder pressure for supermarkets to take a more active role in tackling the UK’s obesity crisis, Tesco has today set out a raft of measures aimed at helping its customers eat more healthily.
The country’s leading grocer has committed to 65% of its total sales coming from ‘healthy’ products as defined by the government’s nutrient profiling model. It hopes to reach this target by 2025 from the current 58%.
Tesco also reaffirmed its plan to increase sales of plant-based meat alternatives by 300% by 2025 with it working to ensure it has more plant-based options alongside meat-based products.
Meanwhile, a major part of the retailer’s strategy will be reformulating products to make them healthier. This includes plans to increase the percentage of ready meals that contain at least one of the recommended five a day to 66% by 2025 (currently 50%). Tesco stated that the reformulation programme would remove billions of calories and thousands of tonnes of salt, fat and sugar from its products, having already made significant progress since 2018.
And ahead of the government’s proposed ban on promotions for HFSS products due to come into force in April 2022, Tesco said it will be increasing the number of promotions on healthy products. It also pledged to offer more affordable plant-based protein options, and build on its ‘Helpful Little Swaps’ events which encourage shoppers to try healthier alternatives of family favourites at the same price.
Tesco also hopes to encourage customers to make changes to their diets through the launch of new ranges, as well as reviewing the prominence and the amount of space dedicated to healthier products in its stores.
The retailer stated that it will publicly disclose the progress against its targets annually.
The move follows recent criticism from a group of influential institutional investors that said Tesco needed to do more to support moves to tackle the growing obesity crisis in the UK. They put forward a ground-breaking health-based shareholder resolution that called on the supermarket to set targets to increase the proportion of healthy products in its sales. The investors suggested that consumer trends and new regulations to combat obesity also presented a financial risk to Tesco if it failed to take action.
Speaking today, Tesco’s CEO Ken Murphy said: “Customers are telling us they want to eat a more healthy, sustainable diet, but without having to stretch the weekly shopping budget. By making even very small changes to the items they put in their basket week in week out, we can help them make that change.
“We’ve worked hard to help our customers eat healthily and we’re proud of our track record, and it’s clear we can do more. Today we are sharing our stretching new ambitions on health, and committing to reporting our progress against them.”
After praising Tesco’s pledges, Anna Taylor, Executive Director at The Food Foundation said: “I hope other retailers are taking note! Shoppers really need supermarkets to make it easier for them to eat healthily and sustainably. Today’s announcements show Tesco is up for the challenge.”
NAM Implications:
- A pointer for others?
- Especially given Tesco’s promise to publicly disclose the progress against its targets annually.
- A move towards raising the bar in terms of relative competitive appeal…
- Watch this space…
