Our commitment
We know how important eating healthily and more sustainably is to our customers – and that they want more help achieving this. We understand that, as a retailer, we can play a vital role in supporting and empowering our customers to make positive changes to their diets.
Making those dietary changes isn’t always easy. No singular approach will have a significant impact on its own; for this reason, we are focussed on making multiple interventions across a range of areas to deliver the most effective outcome. This can’t be achieved overnight, and as part of this journey we will test, trial, and implement different initiatives to deliver the greatest impact.
Our approach
Planetary Health Diet
In 2019, the EAT Lancet Commission published its Planetary Health Diet (PHD) as the scientific basis for global dietary change.* The PHD provides guidance on the recommended daily dietary intakes of different food groups. According to the study, if everyone were to follow a predominantly plant-based diet, around 10 billion people could be fed with healthy foods in 2050 without overburdening the planet.
In 2016, the UK government published the Eatwell Guide which provides a similar representation of recommended intakes. Whilst this guide follows the UK government’s advice on eating a healthy, balanced diet, we have chosen to align ourselves with the PHD which allows for a healthy lifestyle for individuals and the planet.
*EAT Lancet Commission: Food, Planet, Health, 2021.
Our approach to healthy and sustainable diets focuses on three key themes:
We understand that there are many different barriers to eating healthily and more sustainably, such as, uncertainty over how to shop and prepare foods and assumption that healthy food must cost more. It is our role as a retailer to help support our customers to break down these barriers. To do this, we have highlighted 5 key mechanisms:
- Promotion & placement
- Switching & signposting
- Inspiration
- Reformulation & range
- Collaboration & partnership
These mechanisms capture the ways in which the retail sector can bring about change. They also aim to optimise accessibility, visibility, education, availability and credibility of all of Lidl’s healthy and sustainable diets-related offerings. These, together with the three key themes, make up our healthy and sustainable diets strategy house.
Our goal is to make healthy and sustainable food accessible to everyone - especially those on a budget, where we know this can be more challenging. We have already taken significant steps:
In addition to this, as a discounter, we pride ourselves on offering the highest quality food at the lowest prices, as well as offering strong promotions on healthier products. This is the foundation of our commitment to making good food accessible to everyone. For example, Pick of the Week drives sales of healthier products, with 6 different fruit and vegetable lines discounted every week, and our reward app 'Lidl Plus' can help to incentivise the sale of healthier products. See our 'Peas Please' page to read more about our fruit and veg commitments.
In our Healthy & Sustainable Diets policy we outline the next steps we are taking to address health and sustainable diets topics, whether that be the formulation of recipes or the marketing of our products: https://corporate.lidl.co.uk/sustainability/policies
We also recognise the value in collaborating with and learning from others and welcome regulatory measures aimed at tackling the obesity crisis in the UK.
We also work closely with several universities to understand the effectiveness of different healthy eating initiatives. We use this awareness to help support and evidence best practice approaches for influencing positive behaviour change.
