30 June 2025

If you missed yesterday’s announcement on retailers and mandatory reporting on healthy food sold, here’s the low down…

What’s happened?

• The government has announced that supermarkets will be required to “make the healthy choice the easy choice” for shoppers, in a bid to tackle the obesity epidemic and ease pressure on the NHS.
• ‘Large retailers’ including supermarkets will be required to report on the proportion of healthy/ unhealthy food in an average basket, and to shift customers’ shopping baskets towards becoming ‘slightly healthier’.
• The government will set standards for this (in agreement with industry) and retailers that don’t reduce the amount of ­calories, sugar, salt and fat in the average basket could be fined.
• A press release says; “the government will then set targets to increase the healthiness of sales in communities across the UK and work with the Food Strategy Advisory Board on the sequencing of this policy”. (Frankly, I’m not clear on what this means, but hopefully more details will follow this week).
• The method by which retailers get to healthier baskets hasn’t been set (which makes sense since they are highly skilled at driving sales, reformulating products, product positioning, offers/ discounts and strategy etc).
• The measures are part of Wes Streeting’s 10 Year Health Plan to move the NHS towards prevention. More is expected to be published this week. (I’m at Groundswell, so won’t be covering all the ins and outs, so check the news instead).
• Read the press release

Cross departmental working at last?

• Significantly, the announcement was a joint one made by Defra, the Department of Health and Social Care, and NHS England, with Secretary of State backing from Wes Streeting and Steve Reed. Could this be a sign that government departments are finally starting to work together on tackling health inequalities, poor diets and the linkage with farming and food production? If so, HURRAH. More please.
• Steve Reed was quoted as saying; “Our food strategy will bring together the health plan, food producers and retailers to make sure we can feed the nation more healthily while growing the economic success of our food sector”. Again, hurrah, if this means the opportunity for farming has been recognised.

Initial thoughts

• Wes Streeting seems to have been ready to deal with accusations of ‘nanny statism’ which were inevitably leveled at him by (some) media outlets, retorting that the move was of a ‘smart state’ not a nanny one.
• While the move has been largely welcomed, some of the language suggests a cautiousness from Wes Streeting and his team: There is a lot of emphasis on how ‘small changes’ can have big impacts (only 50 fewer calories a day for a child, and one bottle of Coke less for an adult can tackle obesity, says the press release), and that the average shopping basket needs to become only ‘slightly healthier’. (Is slightly enough?)
• Industry itself has (publicly at least), been supportive of the move, saying it will level the playing field for any retailer wanting to drive healthiness but fearful of being penalised financially for making the first move.
• However, that support might be because industry is going to help the government set the targets that it will be required to meet. And as mentioned above, it sounds like we’re talking about small changes rather than a radical shift.

Watch this space

More announcements are expected this week as part of the government’s 10 Year Health Plan. Check here for the latest. As mentioned, I’m at Groundswell this week, so might not be writing about the latest things until next week. Our healthy diets Policy Champion, Ali Morpeth, may stay more up to date though – check her LinkedIn Posts.