Oral evidence: Food and Weight Management, HC 1181
Oral evidence, 28 January 2026.
Witnesses
Beth Fowler, Senior Manager, Healthy and Sustainable Choices, Asda; Liz Fox, National Sustainability Director, Aldi; Nilani Sritharan, Head of Healthy and Sustainable Diets, Sainsbury’s; and Oonagh Turnbull, Head of Health and Sustainable Diets Campaigns, Tesco.
Chair
Welcome to this evidence session of the Health and Social Care Committee. This is our fourth session on food and weight management. After a very busy Christmas period, and some toing and froing on dates, we are very happy to have with us representatives from the top four major supermarkets to talk about food, food affordability and food availability, as pertaining to this inquiry. Can I start by asking you to say who you are and what you do?
Nilani Sritharan
I am Nilani Sritharan, and I head up healthy and sustainable diets for Sainsbury’s.
Liz Fox
Good morning. My name is Liz Fox, and I am the sustainability director at Aldi.
Beth Fowler
Good morning. My name is Beth Fowler, and I lead Asda’s health and sustainable choices team. I lead a team of nutritionists who run Asda’s health strategy, voluntary initiatives and response to legislation on things like high fat, salt and sugar. Asda is the third largest retailer in the UK, with operations across the UK that serve about 20 million customers a week. I am really proud to share the work that we are doing.
Oonagh Turnbull
Hi everybody. I am Oonagh Turnbull, and I am head of health and sustainable diets campaigns at Tesco. My job is to work to support our millions of customers through their health journeys, and I do that by working with partners across the business and externally.
Chair
Lovely. Can you briefly describe what are some actions that you have been taking in this space? When I say “briefly”, I really mean it. What are the top two or three things that you have been doing most recently to meet the needs of our wider population in healthy diets?
Oonagh Turnbull
At Tesco, we are really committed to health, and we have been for a long time. Health is a strategic priority for us and our business, and it is owned at a board level. Our focus and our understanding of our role in health are really clear. It is about addressing the barriers that we know our customers face in health. They are really simple but obviously really important. First and foremost, there is affordability, and we then look at accessibility and, thirdly, inspiration—or doing what we can to inspire customers to get access to the information they need for great food.
Beth Fowler
From our perspective, we have been working on health for over two decades, including lots of voluntary initiatives that I would be happy to share more detail on.
Chair
How will you share more detail? Will you write to us?
Beth Fowler
Yes, I am happy to write about voluntary initiatives that we have implemented in the past. With regards to our current approach, we have a health strategy embedded across our business with key pillars of activity, similar to what Oonagh touched on with Tesco. Product is really important, such as robust nutritional criteria from our own-brand portfolio. Also, accessibility is key to our approach, and it is something that is fundamental to our customers. We disproportionately serve customers from lower socioeconomic groups who are really struggling with budgets and day-to-day challenges around that, so that is key to our approach. As part of that accessibility work, we have had a two-year partnership with Nesta, where we have been looking at the healthiness of our sales and setting a sales-weighted health metric, as well as running trials to look at opportunities to shift to health baskets. Finally, similar to Oonagh, comms is a key part of our strategy. There is lots of work ongoing. Our health target goes to 2030, so we have activity coming up over the next four years to deliver that.
Liz Fox
At Aldi we are built on the principle that we want to provide access to healthy affordable food. That has been the pillar of our strategy as a limited-line discounter, and we need to ensure that we increase the healthiness of our range across our entire portfolio. We do that by listening to what our customers tell us—we do not have a huge amount of data on our customers, because we do not have loyalty apps. However, from the insight sessions that we have with our customers, the key thing they tell us is that they want us to keep it simple, so that is what you see when you walk into an Aldi store. The first thing you will see when you work in is our fruit and veg. We have Super 6 offers on those fruit and veg. Also, placement is really important; we had adopted healthy tills years before the HFFS legislation came in. As I said, prices are a key driving factor here to ensure that we have a high quality of food at that low price. We want to make that as simple to our customers as possible. One example of where you might see that in our stores is that we have a lot of a mixed-case format. In the same place, you might see full-fat yoghurt next to reduced-fat yoghurt—at the same price, in the same place on the shelf. Our key mission is to make it as simple as possible for our customers to make the healthy choice.
Nilani Sritharan
At Sainsbury’s, I want to start by saying we really welcome this inquiry. I think it is super important that we address the health of our nation, and obesity is part of that. It is something we see as a very serious issue. I also want to make the point that it is really important that we get to a healthy food system, which would mean that everyone has access to healthy and affordable food. That is something we take very seriously. We are proud of our initiatives on health. I will give you two long-standing examples and then I will go into a couple of specifics. We were the first to introduce colour-coded, front-of-pack labelling in 2006, in the form of our wheel of health, if you remember that back then; and we were the first to introduce restrictions on unhealthy multi-buys in 2016, so almost a decade before they were regulated. I have a couple of specific issues, although through this inquiry we will probably talk about some others. On affordability, we know that this is especially important to our customers. We have invested in something called the Aldi Price Match, which is one of the most extensive on the market. We also extend to convenience stores, and over 75% of those are a Healthy Choice, a better-for-you choice. We have invested nearly £1 billion in that over the past four years. On reformulation, which we may not talk about quite so much today but is still an important part of the puzzle, I will give just one example of that. We have had many years of reformulating our products, but we focused on sugar reduction in the five categories that contribute most to volumes at Sainsbury’s, and we have reduced sugar by over 35% since 2015—a very significant reduction. We think that action needs to happen right across the system and that we need to develop a positive food culture where healthy food is celebrated. We welcome further discussion.
Chair
I will start by understanding importance. Forgive me, but who said that this is managed at board level?
Oonagh Turnbull
I did.
Chair
Thank you. Is that the same for all the supermarkets? Is that a specific standing order? At Tesco, is that something that is looked at at every board meeting, or is it once a year? How does that work in terms of the board papers?
Oonagh Turnbull
Health is one of our sustainability KPIs, so along with our commercial KPIs, you would expect that to be managed at the board level. We have sustainability committees, which meet regularly, and absolutely, we will report back to that committee on all our sustainability KPIs, including—
Chair
Is that you who reports back, or do you go through—
Oonagh Turnbull
Yes, and the team I work with.
Chair
Understood. In the org chart of Tesco, where do you sit compared with the top job?
Oonagh Turnbull
I work for a director who manages—
Chair
Which director?
Oonagh Turnbull
The director of campaigns and central Europe. He reports to Christine Heffernan, who sits on our board.
Chair
Who sits on the board, and then that reports to the board.
Oonagh Turnbull
No, she is at group level.
Chair
She is at group level. Is she chair of the board?
Oonagh Turnbull
No.
Chair
She just sits on the board—so that is four levels removed from the chair of the board—
Oonagh Turnbull
Three.
Chair
Thank you. Beth, where do you sit in the org chart of the organisation, please?
Beth Fowler
In terms of our ESG strategy and where health sits within that, we have assessed materiality of issues across Asda, our business and our customers, and health is a priority in terms of our approach on ESG strategy. In terms of how the strategy is managed, we have a monthly governance forum, which is chaired by an exec member, and we have leaders from across the business on that forum, from retail operations—
Chair
Is that a sub-committee of the board? Is it managed? Let us start with a simple question. Like Tesco, is health and this agenda something that, in a standing orders kind of way, comes back to board level as a regular occurrence? Yes or no—may I just go down the line?
Oonagh Turnbull
Yes.
Beth Fowler
Yes.
Liz Fox
Yes. We have regular reformulation meetings.
Chair
Reformulation in particular?
Liz Fox
Yes.
Nilani Sritharan
Yes, in terms of our healthy sales performance.
Chair
We will get into the wider ESG and all that, but will you just answer my question—where do you sit compared with the top job?
Beth Fowler
I report to our technical quality and ESG director, who reports to our commercial SVP—so a member of the board.
Chair
Again, three removed.
Liz Fox
I look after our entire sustainability team and health is part of that. I then report to my group director, who reports directly to our chief commercial officer who is on the national board.
Nilani Sritharan
Similarly, I report to our director of sustainability, and that sits within the commercial team—so the director of commercial who sits on the board. I also have very regular briefings with our director of commercial and our CEO.
Chair
Okay, so you get direct access to your CEO on this. Do all our witnesses get direct access to their CEOs on a regular basis?
Oonagh Turnbull
Yes.
Beth Fowler
From our perspective, it is the responsibility of the ESG sponsor—who is an exec member—to take ESG issues to the board and our CEO.
Chair
So no.
Liz Fox
Yes, with our CCO who reports to the CEO.
Chair
The reason this is helpful is that as we question you, first, we understand that you guys are not the ultimate decision makers. That is helpful for the Committee to understand. It is also interesting to see that there is not someone at board level looking at this all the time—and that frames some of our discussions. When you are reporting to the board, what information are you providing? When they are making their commercial decisions, hiring and firing, looking towards the future and the world economic outlook and wondering if they can keep people in jobs, what information are you providing them to make the necessary decisions?
Nilani Sritharan
Sure. We have very regular conversations on health. It is something that our CEO is particularly passionate about. He actually sits on the food strategy advisory board, which is looking at health among other sustainability related issues. Some of the things that we particularly talk about are things such as the healthy start voucher and how we can help support private sector top-ups of those. Those are benefits for the most vulnerable in society, and he is very keen to use his role to help unlock that with Government.
Chair
When you say he is passionate about that, has it filtered into specific KPIs or strategies? Other than speaking warmly about it, has that translated into concrete changes?
Nilani Sritharan
We have undertaken several initiatives where we topped up those vouchers.
Chair
And that was led by the CEO?
Nilani Sritharan
That was led by the business, but he saw how successful it was and is now trying to champion that at a sector level so that it is not just a Sainsbury’s thing, but something that we do across retail.
Chair
That is very helpful. Liz, what information are you providing to the board, so that they can make the right decisions in and among all the other decisions that they need to make?
Liz Fox
We have a specialist nutritionist within our team. It is an important factor for Aldi that we ensure access to healthy and affordable food. That is built into the quality of our products, and therefore a key pillar of our strategy that we would want to move forward with to ensure that we give that offering to our customers. We do that through regular reformulation and making sure that we have clear labelling on pack. As I mentioned on the reformulation, that is a key driver of how we then drive positive reformulation in our products. What I mean by that is removing salt, sugar and calories and putting in positive nutrients like fibre as an example. All those reformulations are overseen by either our CCO or CEO. The buyers will present those reformulations to our board, and then my team will help deliver the reporting of how we are progressing against those targets. One way that the board has supported this—yes, my team suggested it but they backed it—is the introduction of our Live Healthy logo to make that decision even easier for customers. They also ask us to provide regular updates on achieving our healthy sales target of 85% by the end of 2027.
Chair
I was going to come to this topic—perhaps it is something that the other witnesses can weave into their answers. Is that healthy sales target by tonnage?
Liz Fox
Yes.
Chair
Could you say the target again?
Liz Fox
By the end of 2027, 85% of our sales need to come from healthy products. Currently, we are at 81% as of the end of 2024.
Chair
Do you feel that that 4% is really a stretch? It does not feel much like a stretch target.
Liz Fox
We feel that we are making good progress in those areas, but it will require continued focus by my team and the buying teams to ensure that we meet that target.
Chair
Lovely. Nilani, have you got a healthy percentage target by tonnage and what is it?
Nilani Sritharan
Yes. We are currently at 81.9% healthy sales by tonnage. We have an ambition to hit 85% by the end of this financial year. We found it very challenging to continue to grow that. We have seen growth, and we have also seen declines—largely driven by a number of external factors. Things went in our favour when there was a Thames Water contamination issue; it meant that we sold more bottled water, which favoured our healthy sales. Equally, if there is a particularly hot year, we may sell a lot more ice cream, and that can negatively impact at high volumes. Nevertheless, we have invested a lot in trying to do the right thing, and we have actually grown fruit and veg sales above market for the last three years. What all that shows is that it is actually quite a challenge to hit a specific target, but at least we are giving that visibility to our board.
Chair
I think we well understand that; not all of it is in your control, but 85% is. Again, what information is going to the board, and do you have a healthy proportion by tonnage of healthy sales target? If so, what is it, and what is it now?
Beth Fowler
Sure. We provide information to the monthly ESG steerco, led by the exec member who we referenced earlier. A key part of that update is updates to our ESG metrics. One of those metrics is our healthy sales metric. I will give you a bit more detail on that in a moment. The other information that we share with the ESG steerco is about risks and opportunities, where we are seeing—to Nilani’s point—positive trends around health and where we are seeing negative trends, to try and advise the business in terms of next steps. We also have a working group that sits underneath that steerco to deliver the change, which is at director level. In terms of our healthy sales metric, that is a sales-weighted average nutrient profiling model metric. We set that as part of our two-year partnership with Nesta. So, we work with them over two years to share our data, to help ratify that we are setting the right level of ambition, and to look at balancing social impact. And they looked at an independent assessment of that, as well as feasibility, commercial risks and so on attached to that target. The sales-weighted average NPM for information includes the nutrient profiling model of the product—how healthy is that product, based on the definition that the Government have set? There is also the weight of the product, which we think is really important, because if we sell a single chocolate bar, for example, that weighs—I don’t know—50 grams, we would want to count—
Chair
So, you don’t do it by tonnage, in a simpler way?
Beth Fowler
Weight is incorporated into the measure. Again, it has been independently ratified by Nesta. The reason we incorporate that weight metric is because we would want to count a 16-pack of chocolate bars as being more impactful to the healthiness, or the less-healthiness, of the basket versus a single chocolate bar—
Chair
You have a weighted system. So what—
Beth Fowler
It is weighted also by sales volume, which is the number of products that customers buy and put in their baskets.
Chair
So, you cannot give me a comparable number to before?
Beth Fowler
I can give you a baseline and the progress that we have made and publish; we publish that every year in our ESG report. Our baseline was 1.83 on the sales-weighted average NPM and we are currently sat at 1.77. We will be publishing at the end of this year; we are just analysing that data at the moment.
Oonagh Turnbull
For Tesco, we have been reporting our healthy sales metrics since 2021; that was when we set our healthy sales target. At that time, we had a figure of 58%; that was our baseline. We set ourselves a really stretching target of 65% by the end of 2025. I am really pleased to say that we hit that target. It was a really stretching target. At the time, in 2021, I was not sure that we would be able to get there. However, through a huge amount of work across our business, with our suppliers and through all our commercial teams, we were able to get there, as I said, by the end of 2025.
Chair
Okay. Do you have a forward target?
Oonagh Turnbull
Now, our focus is very much on reporting; hopefully, you will be aware of that, but we can come on to talk about it. What we have learned is that getting to the data we need for really accurate reporting based on NPM takes a huge amount of time and effort, not just for us within our business—because, clearly, we are keen to invest in that—but across all of our supply base as well. Our focus now is very much on looking at what reports and what data are needed. We would ask that that is the focus for this Committee, along with a standardised metric.
Chair
The nutrient profile model in particular?
Oonagh Turnbull
For our healthy sales target, we use the 2004 NPM score, which has been really helpful, as you will be aware. Obviously, it is endorsed by Government and it is shared across all our supplier base. To be able to work with the standard metric has been hugely important, enabling us to compare data year on year.
Chair
Can I take it as read, Liz and Nilani, that you are using the NPM model as the basis? I notice that water is included, which feels a bit—
Nilani Sritharan
Most of us report on food and total sales, and food and soft drink are currently included together. That was the ambition at the time. There is definitely an acceptance that that probably needs to change as we look ahead to mandatory reporting. As I have said, we have learned from that. We don’t use the NPM as the measure today, but we do report using the NPM as well. We developed our own internal system to help identify “Better for You” and “Healthy Choice” by category, linked to things such as traffic-light labelling and Public Health England reformulation targets, but we also report in a way that allows comparison with others through our reports. We have one of the most extensive disclosures on healthy sales, which is available annually through our sustainability report.
Chair
What I am getting from this is that everyone is doing it ever so slightly differently. We would love to be able to compare—not just with you, though you are the top four and therefore have largest market penetration; obviously other supermarkets are available—but it is hard for us to do that and therefore judge whether these policies will work or not. It would be really helpful to me, if you are willing, if you could write to the Committee after this session with the specifics of how you measure and what exactly you do. The thesis question is: what is the board looking at, and what are you guys looking at to make your recommendations to the board? It sounds like everyone’s in a slightly different place on this, and we just don’t have time to go into the detail that we would need to understand it fully. I have a feeling that this might be important.
Dr Cooper
I will continue with this line of questioning. As the Chair said, you all do things slightly differently. Obviously, you are competitors, but you have all made the commitment today that improving people’s access to affordable, healthy food is the goal of your supermarkets. When it comes to the various health initiatives that you have done, on the basis of the data that you have collected, what evidence do you have that particular initiatives have or have not worked? Let’s go down the line, and you can tell us, based on data and evidence only, what works and what doesn’t.
Nilani Sritharan
At Sainsbury’s, we have some of the most extensive test and learns, which we have published externally. There have been nearly 12 since 2017. Let me give you two examples of things that worked and two where things didn’t quite happen as we expected. What has worked is a promotion we did on fruit and veg pricing, reducing the price of 11 fruit and veg to 60p. I think we ran it in 2022. We saw a 78% uplift in fruit and veg sales during the promotional period on at least nine of the 11 that were in there.
Dr Cooper
Have you continued that, or did you just have it as a promotion and then the price went back afterwards?
Nilani Sritharan
We continue to include a lot of fruit and veg in our Aldi Price Match campaign, and you may have seen that, just yesterday, we launched half-price Nectar stunt that features quite a number of fruit and veg.
Dr Cooper
So if you have a Nectar card, you can get the reductions in healthy food; if you don’t have a Nectar card, it is more problematic.
Nilani Sritharan
The vast majority of customers now have one, but, even if they didn’t, the Aldi Price Match applies to a high number of fruit and vegetables, and is included in convenience stores, too.
Dr Cooper
So price elasticity works. What else?
Nilani Sritharan
The second is our fruit and veg challenge, which we have done through Nectar, where we incentivise and use gamification to give customers personalised rewards for adding more fruit and veg to their basket. That has led to 780,000 customers joining that scheme and 113 million extra fruit and veg being purchased.
Dr Cooper
Gamification—that is basically rewarding people for making healthy choices.
Nilani Sritharan
Yes, exactly.
Dr Cooper
Could you give me just one example of something that didn’t work out, then I will move on?
Nilani Sritharan
Yes, no problem. Pricing didn’t work when we included fibre-rich products in the Aldi Price Match scheme. We included wholewheat pasta and brown rice in it. We expected to see customers being more tempted to try them. Unfortunately, what we saw was that existing high-fibre customers switched into the lines that were in the Aldi Price Match scheme, but we didn’t see more customers willing to try those products.
Dr Cooper
Do you have any insight as to why that might be the case?
Nilani Sritharan
Price alone might not be the barrier to trying those products. I don’t have the answers, but I suspect it is more than just price.
Dr Cooper
Do you think it is, perhaps, around food preparation?
Nilani Sritharan
Perhaps, yes.
Dr Cooper
Thank you, that is really interesting. Is there anything else to add from your perspective, Liz?
Liz Fox
From an Aldi perspective, data is limited from a customer-insight specific point of view. That said, we are very clear that our customers want us to keep it simple for them. That is why we have moved fruit and veg to the front—
Dr Cooper
When you say simple, do you mean they want to come into the supermarket and for it to be very clear what’s on offer so they can pick it up?
Liz Fox
They would like us to make the healthy choices for them as easy as possible, which is why we have fruit and veg at the front of the store. We know that Super 6 is a big driver of footfall into our stores, so we know that customers want to have access to healthy food at a good price. Other initiatives have been received really well. Alongside access to healthy, affordable food in store, from a wider perspective we also have our Get Set to Eat Fresh programme. That is through our sponsorship of the British Olympic Foundation and it has managed to reach over 3 million children.
Dr Cooper
Fine. That is great advertising for you. Is there anything that has not worked particularly well?
Liz Fox
What we have not seen work well is a loyalty app, which is why we have not introduced one at Aldi. It adds confusion for our customers that they do not want. We do not offer promotions—for example, buy one, get one free—in store. It is simple pricing. There is a level of equality when you walk into the store. As you walk in, you know that you have the same price as everybody else in there, and it will be the lowest possible price for you.
Dr Cooper
Thank you. Beth, very quickly, what has or has not worked in your area?
Beth Fowler
We think this is a really important question. Customer behaviour is complicated. We see various behaviours across different categories. Our ask is for policy to be outcomes-based and to allow us to prescribe the routes to deliver change. We are in a similar position to others in that we have trialled initiatives over previous years. We have collaborated with the IGD, Nesta, Leeds University and so on to independently analyse the results.
Dr Cooper
Can you tell us anything that has or has not worked?
Beth Fowler
Yes. We try to publish those results so that they are available for others to access the learnings of what we have done. What has and has not worked is a really good question. We have trialled similar initiatives in different categories or in different ways, and we see different results. As the custodian of our customer, we feel that we are best placed to understand their behaviour.
Dr Cooper
Beth, what has worked and what has not worked?
Beth Fowler
In terms of results of trials, we have talked to merchandising about the way that we position products in our stores. We did a trial with the IGD on meat-free, for example. We were looking at driving healthy and sustainable choices across meat. We saw in the academia that if we moved products in a certain way, we could achieve behaviour change. When we actually did that in store, we saw a significant reduction in the sales that we were trying to drive. Again, it speaks to customer behaviour being very specific to the category and the way that customers shop our stores. Signposting is another example where we have seen very different results for the same intervention on messaging health within one category.
Dr Cooper
You have a lot of data and you have just told us about an impressive way of working with academia. Is it fair to say that you acknowledge that the way your supermarket is set up very much influences how your customers shop and their health choices, or otherwise?
Beth Fowler
We think that there are lots of levers that we can pull to drive positive—
Dr Cooper
There is evidence that the set-up of the supermarket has an influence. Would you agree with that?
Beth Fowler
I would agree that there are levers that we can pull as a business to drive behaviour change. HFSS legislation, for example, is really complex and really costly for us to implement. When we have worked together across retail to analyse that independently through Leeds University, there is a very minimal reduction in sales of less healthy food.
Dr Cooper
Okay. I think we will come to HFSS later. Oonagh, do you have anything to add?
Oonagh Turnbull
I mentioned at the beginning the barriers that our customers face when it comes to healthy food. Our focus is on introducing and continuing initiatives that address each of those barriers. I can give you examples for affordability, accessibility and inspiration. From an affordability perspective, we all know that the cost of living is the most important thing. Our focus as a business is to ensure that, for price, we are competitive on healthy lines. A good example of that is our Aldi Price Match scheme, where we commit day in, day out to have two thirds of the 650 lines as healthy. That has been really successful for us. In addition to that, Clubcard pricing is an important mechanism. From an accessibility point of view, reformulation is an important lever, as others have talked about. If I can use the example of the children’s yoghurts category, which I know has been mentioned by others on this Committee before, over the last couple of years we have worked hard to take sugar out of that important category for young people—so much so that we have removed 16 tonnes of sugar from that category. We are now a market leader. We will continue to move forward on reformulation. The final area is inspiration. As you can imagine, we are continually looking to see how we can inspire customers through all our customer channels: the Tesco magazine, which is the biggest consumer magazine; our app; and what we do in stores, as you mentioned. A recent example there is our 5-a-day campaign, which we launched last August. We are very aware, as many of you will be, that not enough people at all get access to their five a day across the UK; indeed, only one in 10 children do. What we wanted to do, and still want to do, was change that, so we launched an always-on campaign through all of our comms channels, and that has been really successful. At the end of the first run of that campaign in August, 42% of the basket focused on fruit and veg—
Dr Cooper
I am so sorry, Oonagh; we are running short on time, and I would just like to say for the record that five a day is the minimum and we really should be aiming for a lot more than that, but thank you so much. It is really interesting to hear that you are doing lots of different health initiatives. Obviously, they are very good marketing initiatives as well—let us not be naive about that—but we do want to marry those two things together. In terms of Government support, as the Chair pointed out, you are all doing slightly different things and you are all competitors. Would you be supportive of regulation to level the playing field? You are all competitors in other things, but you are not competitors in the healthy food area in that you all have to hit certain standards. Would you be supportive of regulation to ensure that you are all starting from the same place—yes or no?
Oonagh Turnbull
Well, we are—
Dr Cooper
Just yes or no.
Oonagh Turnbull
I think it is really complicated actually, because we are a really big supporter of evidence-based regulation and policy.
Dr Cooper
So the answer is yes if it is evidence based, basically?
Oonagh Turnbull
And if it is developed with implementation in mind.
Dr Cooper
So it is a provisional yes. Beth, yes or no?
Beth Fowler
We are supportive of evidence-based measures and mandatory reporting, but I think HFSS has shown us that evidence needs to be well based and that we need to be able to implement it—
Dr Cooper
Absolutely. I am all for evidence-based regulation. I am just asking about regulation across all of you to essentially level the playing field. Liz?
Liz Fox
Yes. We are supportive of mandatory reporting. We would want to build on existing data so that we do not invest time in bureaucracy where we can be investing that in areas where we know we can win.
Dr Cooper
Excellent. Nilani?
Nilani Sritharan
We are supportive of mandatory reporting, supportive of better enforcement of existing regulation and supportive of regulation that does affect the whole of the system and so levels the playing field.
Dr Cooper
Excellent. So that is a yes.
Chair
We are going to come back to all these points.
Paulette Hamilton
Good morning, all. Let me set the scene. Between 1993 and 2022, the proportion of adults living with obesity rose from 14.9% to 28.9%. The proportion who either were overweight or living with obesity rose from 52.9% to 63.9%. With that in mind, it has been suggested that voluntary initiatives have failed to reduce the rate of obesity and we should be looking at more mandatory policies. What are your views? Let us start with you, Nilani.
Nilani Sritharan
Some of the voluntary mechanisms have worked. We have certainly reformulated a great number of products, and we wish there was better data to show that. However, we would support mandatory reporting, as I said earlier. Where regulation has come in, we support better enforcement of that. The HFSS placement regulations are a good example of where better enforcement is needed, and we recognise that. We support the HFSS advertising regulations that we voluntarily brought in in October, but were regulated on just in January this year. Looking ahead, mandatory reporting exactly as you have described would lead to one metric being used across the whole of the sector. That would require us to have automated data to be able to report against. That would give us the visibility and allow us to evaluate policy better to inform future policy outcomes.
Paulette Hamilton
So you do think we should move towards mandatory rather than voluntary?
Nilani Sritharan
Where it is evidence based and where it levels the playing field, that can be very helpful.
Paulette Hamilton
Liz? Please be succinct.
Liz Fox
Understood. Voluntary reporting certainly has a place, but in a competitive market, it drives few incentives for progressive companies to go further. That is why Aldi does support mandatory reporting, given all the considerations that we have already discussed.
Beth Fowler
From our perspective, I do want to say that most of the progress, or at least a lot of it, that has been made to date has been voluntary, and as a sector, we have always worked proactively on this. I do want to call that out. You have heard from us today around healthy sales metrics, and we have set those on a voluntary basis. We are supportive of mandatory reporting around healthy sales. Outcomes-based policy is key for us, and we feel that it is important that prescriptive measures are not introduced by the Government because we understand customers, our businesses and the efficiencies required to deliver low-cost shopping, which, to the points raised around incomes and the pressures on the cost of living, is really important. Evaluation is key, and Nilani touched on that—
Paulette Hamilton
I need you get to the point, or we are going to run out of time.
Beth Fowler
Two more points, I promise.
Paulette Hamilton
You are just reading from a list. Just answer the question, please.
Beth Fowler
I do genuinely believe in this, and I care about our customers—
Chair
I know, but we have limited time, so let’s get to it.
Beth Fowler
They are at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. For us—final two points—pragmatism and we have—
Paulette Hamilton
Pragmatism, and what is the final point?
Beth Fowler
The final point is a whole-systems approach.
Paulette Hamilton
Whole-systems approach. Thank you very much. Over to you, Oonagh.
Oonagh Turnbull
Along with others, we also support mandatory reporting, so much so that back in May, our CEO along with the CEOs of our health charity partners—British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Diabetes UK—put an ask in to Government for that. We are really pleased that that is being looked at seriously now and we very much welcome it. For us, that is the focus as we move forward. In addition to that, we also think that there is a role for voluntary reporting and initiatives.
Paulette Hamilton
I am going to stop you there and go back to you, Nilani. You were the only one to talk about enforcement. Why have you highlighted that?
Nilani Sritharan
For good regulation to exist, it is not about just mandating it, but about it being enforced. If it isn’t enforced, there isn’t a sense that there is an actual regulation there. We have invested so much money in implementing this regulation. We want it to be a fair and level playing field, and that is why enforcement is so important.
Paulette Hamilton
We talked about voluntary measures. Do you think we are at the end of what we can do with them—yes or no? Is there more we can do?
Nilani Sritharan
There is always more we can do, but the mandatory reporting will unlock a lot more insight.
Paulette Hamilton
So you think we’ve got as far as we can with people doing things voluntarily.
Nilani Sritharan
No. I do not think that is fair.
Paulette Hamilton
So you don’t think we’ve got to the end. What about you, Liz?
Liz Fox
I think mandatory reporting can, if done in the right way, encourage more voluntary reporting.
Paulette Hamilton
Right; I like that. Over to you, Beth.
Beth Fowler
No. We think we can definitely go further in terms of voluntary measures. By definition, our healthy sales target is for the future, for 2030—so there is more work to be done.
Paulette Hamilton
Brilliant. Over to you, Oonagh.
Oonagh Turnbull
We think that there is always more that we can all do to accelerate the change that is needed.
Paulette Hamilton
Right. My final question is: do you feel that the Government should concentrate more on mandatory reporting than it currently does, and where do you think that would place your organisations? I am going to start with you, Oonagh.
Oonagh Turnbull
As I mentioned, we are a big supporter of mandatory reporting. As I said, we asked for it last year, and we would ask that that is the focus, from a policy perspective, as we move forward, along with a standardised metric to allow us to compare like with like across the industry.
Beth Fowler
We are supportive of healthy sales metrics and reporting, so we would welcome more focus from the Government on the policy.
Liz Fox
Aldi agrees that we need to focus on simple reporting measures and building on existing data to ensure that we increase access to healthy products and clarity for customers rather than narrowing range, which links into the new nutrient profiling model discussion that we will probably have later.
Nilani Sritharan
Yes, we are supportive of mandatory reporting. As you have seen from this panel, most retailers are already reporting, so it is a question of adjusting to a common metric, but in fact, the vast majority of the sector is not reporting, and that is where we need to see progress being made.
Paulette Hamilton
I realise I have got another minute or so. This is a personal thing that I am passionate about: at Christmas, for the first time ever, I saw the retailers seem to come together. Most retailers were selling the fruit and vegetables that you would have on your Christmas table for 5p. Some went up a little bit further, but it was around 5p to 15p. How often do you come together and do that type of work? Because if the retailers worked more closely together to do some of that work, it would really help. People in my constituency were ringing each other to say, “At that shop, it’s 5p”—it really caused a buzz at Christmas with fruit and vegetables.
Beth Fowler
I am really pleased with your feedback on that. Price is important to all our customers. It is a really important initiative that has been running for many years. We do deep discounts at Christmas on produce to help customers manage their Christmas shop. In terms of coming together and working together, we have done that for many years. We meet with each other, I would say monthly, on pre-competitive issues around health, sustainability and so on. We are committed to continue doing that.
Liz Fox
We do need to be careful around how we talk together about price from a competitive perspective—I am just highlighting that.
Paulette Hamilton
Thank you for being honest.
Liz Fox
I do want to be careful around that topic. What Aldi is really proud of is that it does set the benchmark for low price. As a competitive industry, we are always monitoring what each other is doing. I want to make it clear that we ensure that the temporary nature of promotions is made clear to our customers. We also absorb 100% of the cost of those promotions to protect our suppliers. That is a big investment from our perspective at Aldi. We would continue to do that through our Super 6 promotions to ensure that we give accessibility to our customers.
Nilani Sritharan
As Liz rightly said, we do not talk about pricing between us, but nevertheless we invest in making healthy choices more affordable through our Aldi Price Match campaign. A point that is maybe still relevant is that often on issues like health, although we talk about things in pre-competitive areas, it is not always easy to test and learn collectively because of the issues of anti-competitiveness. It is worth a conversation on how you could unlock that to make it easier to run trials across a high street.
Paulette Hamilton
That is a fantastic place to stop, and I will hand back to the Chair. [Interruption.] Did I miss anybody? I apologise, Oonagh—I’ll ask you.
Oonagh Turnbull
Don’t worry—I’m sat at the end. Just to sum up what others have said, two things matter to our customers at the moment: health is one of them, and cost of living and price is the other. As with others, Christmas and the pricing of fruit and veg at that time is really important, but to us it is important all year round.
Josh Fenton-Glynn
Oonagh set me up perfectly for my questions, which are on the price differences between healthy foods and non-healthy foods. Beth, can you explain the differences in profitability between high fat, sugar and salt foods and foods such as fruit and vegetables? What are the drivers of those differences?
Beth Fowler
Thank you for starting with us because, to bring it back to the Asda customer, cost is really important. I have spoken about lower socioeconomic groups. This is something that we care about. We have been collecting 15 years’-worth of data on our customers’ incomes and the pressures on those incomes. We know that our least well-off customers are £73 in deficit each week after covering essential spend, so affordability and so on are really important when it comes to health and more broadly. In terms of your question on profitability, we do not see systemic differences across healthy and less healthy categories when we look at margin data. Profitability is not driven by the healthiness or less healthiness of the product. Drivers of cost are complicated; they are category and product-specific—labour, raw materials, storage, perishability and so on. We see cost pressures across our supply chain and across categories. With fruit and vegetables, we have certain challenges around climate, for example, and Brexit has introduced significant challenges in that space. Equally, commodity price surges in cocoa have had detrimental impacts in less healthy categories. We see examples of cost pressures across the piece, and profitability is not one-dimensional.
Josh Fenton-Glynn
That is interesting to me, because the assumption is that the processed foods are perhaps a little more profitable, and that is the basis of the price, because there is a price differential and a difference in the price per calorie. Liz, what is driving the price-per-calorie difference between healthy choices and non-healthy choices if it is not profitability?
Liz Fox
I would need to look into the specific modelling, but from what I know, if we are looking at it from a calorie basis, it takes a huge amount more weight to have the same number of calories of potato, for example, compared to a chocolate bar. That may be what is driving that comparison. Similarly to what Beth said, our profitability strategy is not based on how we price healthy versus unhealthy products. Our strategy as Aldi is to have an everyday low price, and we will do that to the best of our ability for our customer.
Josh Fenton-Glynn
Nilani, all these conversations are about people’s income but also the profitability question. Sainsbury’s has quite a lot of Local stores. Research by Which? recently found that cheaper staples like pasta, vegetables and tinned tomatoes were 87% less likely to be in the Local stores. Why is that?
Nilani Sritharan
We have actually done some research into that. I can tell you that the convenience stores that we have across our estate are equally located in areas of low affluence and areas of higher affluence. They are no more represented in the lower-affluence areas. We also undertook a review of value, and our Aldi Price Match campaign has been extended to convenience stores, so you can actually get quite a large selection of items—enough to be able to prepare up to 30 recipes—from a convenience store, meaning that you can still access great value in those stores.
Josh Fenton-Glynn
You say that convenience stores are in poorer and better-off areas.
Nilani Sritharan
Both, equally.
Josh Fenton-Glynn
That is true, but the availability of transport is not equal; that is the problem. That is why two-thirds of people on lower incomes are likely to use convenience stores once a week. There is a problem with what is available in those stores. You are telling me that you have more than, perhaps, Which? has found. Is that something that you have found as well, Oonagh?
Oonagh Turnbull
We work really hard to make sure that, across all our store formats, whatever size store customers shop in, they are able to have access to the food that they need, day in, day out—those everyday essentials that you mentioned. We absolutely believe that you would be able to go into any Tesco store and get any of those items at a great price. We aim to be competitive all the time, and clearly we do not want any of our customers to have to pay more anywhere to access the food that they need to have a healthy and sustainable diet.
Chair
I have a quick follow-up. I was intrigued by the price-per-calorie conversation. Do you guys have a price per calorie for your food that is compliant with HFSS legislation? Can we get it? Nilani, do you have it, or can you write to us with it?
Nilani Sritharan
We could calculate it. The question is whether that is actually helpful, because the customer is buying a portion rather than per calorie. We also need to think about that, but we could calculate it, yes.
Chair
If it is possible, could you write to us with it? We are trying to get to the price per calorie for the category that is currently regulated versus everything else. That is what I would love to see. Others have done that work; I am curious to know if you have it. Clearly you do not have it to hand, which suggests that you are using other metrics, which is also interesting. Liz, do you have it?
Liz Fox
If we have that data, we can share it. I would need to understand how we could get that data from our systems.
Chair
Thank you. Beth, do you have it?
Beth Fowler
To build on Nilani’s point, we do not feel that that is the right metric. We understand that NGOs and academics use that metric, but can I bring it to life with an example? That metric is a very one-dimensional way to look at health. Calories are a measure of the healthiness of a product, but products have nutritional profiles that span multiple nutrients. If you were to, equally, look at price per unit of fibre or vitamin A, fruit and veg would look really affordable and chocolate would not. We have concerns and challenges around that metric. I would like to reassure you that it is something that we have looked at. The price of the healthiest products in our range—the products with the lowest NPM scores—is lower than the least healthy products in our range. We would be happy to share more data on that.
Chair
Yes, please.
Oonagh Turnbull
In this incredibly complicated world, we have been very focused on the NPM and our 65% healthy sales target—that is absolutely what we have been looking at.
Chair
So that is the north star metric, rather than this one?
Oonagh Turnbull
Absolutely.
Ben Coleman
Thank you all for coming. I would like to focus a little more on the affordability of healthy food. The Government have the Healthy Start scheme to support pregnant women and low-income families with small children. At one point, Sainsbury’s offered a £2 extra top-up to that scheme; have you stopped doing that?
Nilani Sritharan
We offer a benefit to customers we think may benefit from it, but we are not able to assign it to the Healthy Start voucher customer.
Ben Coleman
Because?
Nilani Sritharan
Because when the voucher was digitised and it moved to a Mastercard format, we had no way of easily identifying that customer in our systems to anonymously generate a coupon at the till. It is something we have raised with the Government.
Ben Coleman
If it moved back to being paper-based, you would still offer the £2 top-up.
Nilani Sritharan
Yes.
Ben Coleman
Can I ask the others? What is your relationship to Healthy Start? Do you take the vouchers? Do you offer top-ups? Would you offer top-ups if it was a paper-based voucher? Take Tesco, for example.
Oonagh Turnbull
We are really pleased to support and accept the Healthy Start voucher in all our stores, and Best Start in Scotland. We actually worked with the Marcus Rashford taskforce during covid and other representatives you have had on the Committee, including the Food Foundation, to look at a top-up, and we were able to offer that, which was really good.
Ben Coleman
What did you offer?
Oonagh Turnbull
£1.
Ben Coleman
When did that run?
Oonagh Turnbull
That was during covid.
Ben Coleman
We still have a cost of living crisis. We have an affordability crisis.
Oonagh Turnbull
Absolutely. Unfortunately, as Nilani said, the scheme changed, but we are actively involved in conversations with industry bodies to see what is possible.
Ben Coleman
If it came back as a voucher-based scheme, would you still offer the £1 top-up?
Oonagh Turnbull
Absolutely—we are focused on making sure that those customers who need support get the support they need.
Ben Coleman
If it came back as a voucher-based scheme, you would offer the £1 top-up.
Oonagh Turnbull
Well, I think that is a hypothetical question, because—
Ben Coleman
It is a hypothetical question—that is exactly what it is. If it came back as a paper—
Oonagh Turnbull
We are a really proud supporter of the Healthy Start scheme.
Ben Coleman
So what would that mean? How could it be better? How could you do more and contribute more towards it if the scheme was reformulated—to use a popular word?
Oonagh Turnbull
Healthy Start, as others have talked about, is one of many schemes that are—
Ben Coleman
I am talking about Healthy Start, and how you would support that if it was easier to do and not electronic.
Oonagh Turnbull
One of the big things with Healthy Start, for us—certainly during the covid experience we had—was our role in helping with awareness of the scheme. You will probably be aware that awareness of the scheme is low, and we know from partners like the Food Foundation that a lot of work needs to take place to make sure that the people who are able to access the scheme get the scheme. A big focus for us across all our businesses is to help with awareness raising.
Ben Coleman
Sainsbury’s has said that if it goes paper-based, it will do a £2 top-up, and you have said, “Dunno.” What about you, Beth?
Beth Fowler
From our perspective, we support any scheme that supports deprived customers. That is our customer group—
Ben Coleman
Would you do a top-up if it was a voucher?
Beth Fowler
We care about those customers. To Nilani and Oonagh’s point around the scheme moving to a pre-paid debit card, our concern currently with top-ups—
Ben Coleman
Forgive me—I am terribly sorry, but I asked a specific question. I understand the debit card point, because it has been made twice now. If it moved to a paper-based scheme, would you offer a top-up?
Beth Fowler
I do have a different comment to make in relation to the debit card. Because it is a debit card, we cannot control, for example, what customers are buying with that card, and we have concerns around topping that up for customers and it not being used on the categories that Government intend it to be used for.
Ben Coleman
Would you be able to control it if it was a paper voucher?
Beth Fowler
Yes, and we did historically.
Ben Coleman
And if it was a paper voucher, would you then match Sainsbury’s and offer £2 on top, or £1 even?
Beth Fowler
We would need to consider that, because it would obviously require investment. We need to consider it across other areas, like price investment, but it is certainly something we would consider.
Ben Coleman
Thank you. What about your position at Aldi?
Liz Fox
Aldi does accept Healthy Start vouchers, and we would be open to adding value at the till. We would need to understand how we would be able to make that work. We have been talking with the NHS team recently on this.
Ben Coleman
Is it genuinely worth us going back to the Government and saying, “If you don’t insist on it being on a credit card, but you make it paper-based, the supermarkets will look at topping it up”? Yes, no, or maybe?
Nilani Sritharan
Can I give context? I think you do not necessarily need to go back to the coupon. I think what we need to do is unlock how we can allow the private sector to top up the existing system. That would be the solution, and I would very much support that.
Ben Coleman
You would put extra money in.
Nilani Sritharan
Yes.
Liz Fox
Maybe we would need to understand how it would work in our systems.
Ben Coleman
Fair enough.
Beth Fowler
To Nilani’s point, there may be a better solution, but we would want to be able to control the categories that that money was being used for, so as not to worsen health inequalities, but we would consider it.
Oonagh Turnbull
I think we all have a role to play in making sure that the number of people who access Healthy Start increases.
Ben Coleman
I appreciate that, but that is a general comment. Would you look at it if it was made more accessible?
Oonagh Turnbull
We would continue to support the scheme and would absolutely look, as we are already doing.
Ben Coleman
Thank you very much. We have this whole problem, as you can see. We are focusing on one aspect of affordability, but how can we make healthy food more accessible? What are you doing to make your basic ranges more accessible, in terms of both where they are sold and the price they are offered at? Maybe we could start with Aldi.
Liz Fox
Our approach at Aldi is to have everyday low prices across our range. Because we are a limited-line retailer, we have only a certain number of products and a certain number of lines. Our mission and ambition is to increase the healthiness of our entire range, which is why we introduced our Live Healthy logo.
Ben Coleman
At the same price?
Liz Fox
Yes. It goes back to my earlier example of our full-fat yoghurt that is next to a lower-fat yoghurt in the same case, and on the shelf for the same price. That will also be the same across all our stores.
Ben Coleman
I am not quite clear on how it works. I went on to Tesco’s website, and I looked at the chicken masala. You have your basic chicken masala, and you then have your Finest chicken masala, and there is £1 difference in price—the basic is £3.85 and the Finest is £4.85. The cheaper one has slightly less chicken—it is 18% versus 20%—but it has fully refined soybean oil, palm oil and masses more HFSS. For example, it has far more salt, although both of them fail quite badly when it comes to salt, but you have more salt in the cheaper one. From a nutritionist’s point of view, why does putting in all these things make the product so much cheaper?
Oonagh Turnbull
To be clear, I am not a nutritionist, so I would not be able to—and would not want to—answer that.
Ben Coleman
Perhaps it is one for the nutritionists, because it is a general question.
Oonagh Turnbull
I can certainly talk about the work that we have done on reformulation. You have pulled out one particular example, but if you look across all our ready meals, over half of them contain at least one of your five a day, and 30% contain beans, for example. What we are constantly doing, bearing in mind the cost of living and the needs of customers, is reformulating so that we have a range of products available to customers in our store—from the Finest range that you have just mentioned right through to the others.
Ben Coleman
I get that, but you have your Finest range, and it is the “finest”. If we look at your RAG rating, it is red for fat, saturates and salt. It is even worse with your basic rating, as it is high in fat, saturates and salt, and it is medium in sugars. Can somebody explain to me why we need palm oil and so much salt in products to bring the price down? Can a nutritionist explain that to me? I think one of you is a nutritionist.
Nilani Sritharan
Two of us are nutritionists.
Ben Coleman
Two of you are nutritionists. When you add salt and palm oil to food, why does it enable you to bring the price down?
Nilani Sritharan
I cannot talk about the specifics of that particular product.
Ben Coleman
But it is products all over. If you read Chris van Tulleken’s book, it is very clear about the range of products that it is all added to.
Nilani Sritharan
The important question here is: what are we doing to help make the outcome healthier and driving healthier sales easier? We are constantly looking at products. We have a number of brand standards for our own-brand range. We are very strict about that, and we continue to benchmark products against our competitors’. We put the labelling on the front of packaging to make it easier to identify the healthier choice, and we consistently benchmark products to reformulate over time. One thing about mandatory reporting is that if we were to start to do that by category, we would be able to compare products more easily across our peers, and I think that, in itself, would drive positive reformulation.
Ben Coleman
Good. The frustration of the Committee is that, when we are all here, we all have lots of questions. That is nice for you, because we do not drive as deeply as we might otherwise do. I am going to need to move on to something about advertising. Does the advertising of food and drink products increase the consumption of what is advertised—yes or no? If you advertise something, do people buy it more? You spend huge amounts on advertising; presumably there is a purpose in doing so.
Chair
Why are you guys struggling to answer this question? It is self-evident, isn’t it?
Ben Coleman
Take Asda first. If you advertise particular food and drink products, does it increase their consumption?
Beth Fowler
I do not have data on that, so I cannot share the numbers with you.
Ben Coleman
You do not have data on that. As an expert of many years in the industry, you are not clear in your own mind whether it does or not.
Beth Fowler
What I can share with you is that, for our own-brand communications across all channels and ways in which we talk to customers, health is factored into that decision making.
Ben Coleman
In your own-brand communications. Is that the same for all of you? You are all moving—
Danny Beales
But that was not the question. Sorry to cut you off, but that really was not the question that was asked. All of you as supermarkets advertise products on TV and online. Are you saying that you have no evidence, formally or informally, that the large amount of money you spend on TV time and physical media does or does not promote the uptake of those products?
Oonagh Turnbull
Could I give the example of a campaign that we launched last February, our “It’s everything” campaign, which is absolutely focused on great, affordable, healthy food in a family setting?
Danny Beales
Apologies, but that still wasn’t the question. Do you or don’t you—
Oonagh Turnbull
Sorry, I was just going to come to that. What we have found is that that has been really successful. It is a brand campaign for Tesco and absolutely focused on the basics of good nutrition in a family setting. If I can give an example of the impact that it has had, our fresh food category, over Christmas, was our star performer—up 6.6% year on year.
Danny Beales
I think Ben needs to come back in, but that wasn’t the question and it’s quite ludicrous that—
Chair
One second—can I just clarify this? Are you guys, in your roles, able to get that kind of data for us? When you are saying, “I don’t have the data,” does that mean that you specifically don’t have the data or Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Aldi don’t have the data? Can I just get clarification on that? Beth, you were the one who said, “I don’t have the data”.
Beth Fowler
I don’t have that data with me today.
Chair
With you today? Write to us—
Beth Fowler
I would be happy to go and look at what data we hold. I don’t know whether we have the specific data you are looking for.
Chair
Okay, fine.
Beth Fowler
One of the complexities and reasons why it is difficult to answer this question is that not all advertising is related to specific products. There is advertising about our brand, our shopping experience and our price. So I would like to take it away and maybe get a bit more clarity on the question.
Chair
Thank you.
Ben Coleman
That’s fine. I think this is quite an important question. You have talked about your own products, but the control on branded products is less than on your own products, and you are all, with the possible exception of Aldi—from the research that we have done—moving towards a very intensive retail media push, and there is talk of Tesco making as much as 10% of its profits, by promoting whatever brands pay you to promote them in store, online, through your cards and all that. If a brand pays you to promote it, you are not going to be worrying about whether it is nutritional; you are just going to take the largest amount of money that it pays you and you are going to promote the brand. That is the case, isn’t it? I am going to take that to Sainsbury’s.
Nilani Sritharan
For us to be successful and grow as a UK business, we have to do what is right for the customer, and what the customer actually wants is for us to invest in making great-quality products at good prices, so promotional decisions are actually based on being able to deliver value—
Ben Coleman
But you have a financial incentive to take whichever brand pays you most, regardless of its nutritional content.
Nilani Sritharan
It’s not only that that is considered when we consider what to promote. It also has to be what is right for our customers and what is right, therefore, for our business.
Ben Coleman
Okay, last question. The Less Healthy advertising regulations came into force. A statutory instrument was laid to exempt brand advertising from the legislation. Did any of you or your companies lobby against these regulations or in favour of the new statutory instrument? If you didn’t, did the trade association of which you are members, the British Retail Consortium, lobby against the regulations or in favour of the new statutory instrument?
Oonagh Turnbull
We weren’t involved directly in those conversations. I do understand that the trade bodies were involved, but simply to understand the guidance that was needed and to ensure that the regulations would be able to be implemented well.
Ben Coleman
Simply to understand the guidance. Beth?
Beth Fowler
From our perspective, we have always tried to engage with Government in terms of policies coming in, to ensure they are right for our customers—again, are they going to drive cost, and so on?
Ben Coleman
Did you lobby on the Less Healthy advertising regulations or the statutory instrument?
Beth Fowler
We spoke to Government many times over a long period of time.
Ben Coleman
On this issue?
Beth Fowler
I don’t have specific data on that. Any engagement that we have with Government has the intention of—
Ben Coleman
Did you speak to the Government on this issue? Sorry, but it’s—
Beth Fowler
We did speak to Government on the issue, but—
Ben Coleman
Thank you very much. What about Aldi?
Beth Fowler
Can I please clarify the nature of those conversations? The nature of those conversations was to understand—get clarity on the guidance. It is a really complicated piece of legislation; I think everybody who is engaged in that would feed that back.
Ben Coleman
It was just to get clarity, then?
Beth Fowler
To ensure we’re implementing it in the correct way for our customers. That is the nature of our engagement.
Ben Coleman
Did you make a case to the Government to exempt brand advertising?
Beth Fowler
I am not aware of us making a case to do that.
Ben Coleman
What about Aldi?
Liz Fox
We have never lobbied against that legislation; we have only ever sought clarity for implementation.
Ben Coleman
And Sainsbury’s?
Nilani Sritharan
We welcome the advertising regulations. We asked questions about implementation, because it wasn’t clear how, for example, recipes would be treated as part of that.
Ben Coleman
Did the British Retail Consortium, which you are a member of, lobby against the regulations?
Nilani Sritharan
I believe that they actually sought clarity for—
Ben Coleman
Just to let you know, we have, through a freedom of information request, a letter from the British Retail Consortium and others lobbying against the regulations. It is surprising that none of you seems to be aware of this.
Chair
Thank you. We need to move on.
Alex McIntyre
I am sure your PR teams will get a bit of a headache this morning. I’m going on to price promotion and how healthy foods fit into that. Without wanting to go across the whole panel, can we all broadly agree that you would say that non-HFSS foods are broadly seen as healthy by all your supermarkets—not high in fat, salt and sugar? They would be classed as healthy, probably, for most of your purposes when you look at internal data.
Beth Fowler
Our sales-weighted healthy metric is based on the nutrient profiling model.
Alex McIntyre
I have just been doing a bit of online shopping—Aldi does not do online, but we will come to you in a moment. Tesco’s 4 for 3 on your favourite frozen products is on your offers of the week. They are Birds Eye chicken dippers, Aunt Bessie’s golden Yorkshires and Birds Eye potato waffles. Sainsbury’s top offers of the week are Maryland cookies, fruity hot cross buns and Birds Eye chicken dippers again. We have then got a big vat of sunflower oil. Asda has 12 mini chocolate pancakes from Warburtons, Fridge Raiders, McCain home chips and Cheddars. I think we have also got some Minstrels, M&Ms and more potato waffles. Aldi, you do not do online shopping in the same way as the others, but we have wine of the week and beer offers, alongside budget recipes. I am using those as an example of non-HFSS foods. I have a two-year-old and I am terrified in case he ends up looking like his dad and morbidly obese with type 2 diabetes. As I understand it, and according to all of you on healthy food modelling, I could give him a diet of Coco Pops for breakfast, followed by chicken dippers and potato waffles for lunch, followed by fish fingers and chips for dinner, and all that could be promoted by you offering price promotions on healthy non-HFSS foods. Do you see any issues with that? I will start with Nilani.