Healthy Eating

Healthy & Sustainable Diets

HSD

Healthy diets

As a retailer, our role in supporting healthier diets includes making our products healthier and making healthier choices easier for our customers. Some of the interventions we’ve made include:

  • Supporting parents with the burden of pester power by banning designs attractive to children on our own brand products classed as less healthy.
  • Working towards the UK government’s salt, sugar, and calorie reduction schemes.
  • Trialling a 4 week ‘Healthier Swaps’ initiative in 2021 across all Lidl GB stores where we signposted a range of healthier alternative products, all easy to make and at the same price or less.
  • Relocating all fresh fruit and veg to the front of stores in 2018 three years after introducing Pick of the Week, which discounts six different fruit and veg weekly.
  • Introducing a ‘healthy checkouts’ policy in 2014 ahead of government legislations, aimed at reducing impulse purchases of sweets and sugary treats.

The interventions and initiatives we run support our overarching commitments to:

  • Increase sales, based on tonnage, of healthy and healthier products to at least 80% by 2025*.
  • Increase sales of fresh fruit and veg by 35% by 2026.
  • Increase the tonnage of total fibre sold by 20% by 2026.
  • Boost the volume of wholegrains we sell to 25% of total grains by 2030.

Find out how we’re defining and reporting healthy and healthier food sales, as well as making our food healthier below.

Defining ‘healthy’ food

We apply FSA’s 2004/05 Nutrient Profile Model (NPM) to our entire own brand range, excluding single-ingredient products. This NPM reviews energy, saturated fat, total sugar, sodium, fibre, protein and fruit, nut and vegetable content of products, producing an overall score. Foods scoring less than 4 points and drinks scoring less than 1 point, as well as all single-ingredient products (e.g. fruit, veg, meat, poultry), are classified as healthy.

We recognise that not all products can be healthy, but we’re keen to provide healthier alternatives where possible. To do this, we’ve defined healthier as foods scoring four to six points and drinks scoring one to three points. Foods and drinks scoring more than this are classified as least healthy.

This information is disseminated across key departments in the business and used as a key metric in which our improvements in nutritional values are monitored and opportunities for improvement identified.

Reporting sales of ‘healthy’ food

We’re committed to annually reporting the proportion of our entire own brand range which are healthy, healthier, or least healthy, using this methodology to inform our stakeholders of our ongoing performance. As part of this commitment, we’ve pledged to monitor and track sales of healthy and healthier products, against our total sales. We’re tracking our sales based on volume tonnage as this most accurately represents total levels of nutrition. We compare progress against a 2019 baseline.

Between 2019 and 2022, we saw a 5% shift in ‘least healthy’ to ‘healthy’/’healthier’ product sales. In the past year, this has continued to shift so that we now meet our goal of achieving at least 80% of our sales, based on tonnage, to be from ‘healthy’ or ‘healthier’ products. We are committed to continuing to make shifts away from ‘least healthy’ products, towards ‘healthy’ and ‘healthier’ products.

1 Healthy diets Healthier products and 2020 performance

We have set out several commitments aimed at ensuring the products we sell and the way in which we talk about them support healthier food choices. Our comprehensive reformulation programme led by our expert nutrition team drives positive changes to meet these commitments by incorporating more plant-based, fibre-rich ingredients like lentils, beans, and grains, whilst reducing fats, salts and sugars. We’re looking to introduce new and exciting high-fibre products too - boosting nutritional value and making everyday items healthier.

Increasing fibre

We aim to increase the tonnage of total fibre sold by 20% by 2026 and boost the volume of wholegrains we sell to 25% of total grains by 2030. We will also continue to increase the number of products with fibre declared on packaging.

Children's marketing

We're supporting parents with the burden of pester power by banning designs attractive to children on our own brand products classed as less healthy.

We also do not advertise unhealthy branded and own brand food on marketing materials aimed directly at children.

Reducing salt, sugar and calories

We continue to work towards the UK government’s salt, sugar, and calorie reduction schemes.

Reducing fat

We will decrease total fat content of our own brand products, focussing primarily on saturated fat.

Reducing additives

We will review and reduce levels of additives. If additives are required in food, we prefer natural additives over artificial.