Healthier Food

Making food healthier

Our commitment is to continuously improve the nutrition of our food range through:

Increase sales, based on tonnage, of healthy and healthier products to at least 85% by 2025
Increase sales of fresh fruit and veg by 35% by 2026
Make our food healthier by working towards the UK governments salt, sugar and calorie reduction targets

As part of this commitment we’ve pledged to monitor and track sales of healthy and healthier products, against our total sales (as detailed below). We’re tracking our sales based on volume tonnage as this most accurately represents total levels of nutrition. Find out how we’re defining and reporting healthy and healthier food sales, as well as making our food healthier below.

Defining 'healthier' food

In 2021 our specialist nutrition team developed a nutrient profiling system (NPS) to define healthy, healthier and least healthy products and have applied this to our entire permanent and promotional own brand range. Our system is based on Public Health England’s existing nutrient criteria for front of pack traffic light labelling including, focusing on fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt contents. Our approach ensures that all our products defined as ‘healthy’ and ‘healthier’ have no red traffic lights.

Products have been categorised based on the following:

Healthy	1 or less 'ambers' and 0 'reds'
Healthier	2 or more 'ambers' and 0 'reds'
Least Healthy	1 or more 'reds'

Our approach is simple, enabling our technical teams to apply the system to our entire permanent range to easily track sales shifts and identify strategic areas for improvement. 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 'healthier' food

We’re committed to annually reporting the NPS score of our entire permanent own brand range and all promotional lines (brand and own brand), using this methodology to inform our stakeholders of our ongoing performance.

*All single ingredient products (e.g. fruit & veg, meat, fish and poultry) and food categories used for home baking (Basic Foodstuffs) have been defined as ‘healthy’ and are included in the calculation.

Making Food Healthier

We’ve developed a comprehensive reformulation programme led by our expert nutrition team which delivers against our commitment to meet Public Health England's nutritional targets and Childhood Obesity Strategy objectives. Across key own label product categories, we accurately track nutritional values and work to continuously reduce salt, sugar and calories, without impacting taste.

Salt

We’re working to reduce salt content across our range, aligning with PHE’s current salt target.

Performance: 2020/21 - 85% products meet the maximum salt target*.

*Average target is used as a maximum across those categories where no maximum target exists.

Sugar

As set out in the Childhood Obesity Strategy we are reducing the sugar content in those food categories that make up the majority of a child sugar intake by 20%

Performance: 2020/21 - sugar targets have been met in 5 categories (sales weighted average)

Performance: 2020/21 - sugar reductions have been made in 5 categories

Calories

We’ve set targets to reduce calories levels across food categories aligned with PHE calorie reduction programme.

Performance: 2020/21 - calorie targets met across 0 categories (sales weighted average)

Performance: 2020/21 - calorie reductions made in 4 categories (sales weighted average)

Performance: 2021/21 - 85% products meet the maximum calorie target (maximum calorie target per portion)

Additional actions on healthier food

In addition, we have developed an annual nutrient improvement programme, working closely with our suppliers, to analyse the nutrition of over 200 additional own brand permanent products each year and continually improve nutrition levels.

In 2017, we were one of the founder signatories to the Food Foundation’s Peas Please pledge. As part of the initiative we are committing to run more discounts on vegetables, in a bid to making greens more affordable for more families.