Operating Review
...and health
Eating a variety of foods is one of the most effective ways to achieve a healthy diet. Supermarkets can play an important role in helping people to balance their diet by providing a wide range of different products. Customers make up their own minds about what they eat; what they want is information to help them choose the right food for them. We believe our job is to provide clear and honest labelling about ingredients, cooking and nutrition.
Sales of organic food continue to grow As more retailers and manufacturers start labelling products, multiple traffic lights (“MTLs”) – the system approved by the Government’s Food Standards Agency – are emerging as the most effective and popular way to provide the ‘at-a-glance’ information customers need to make healthier choices when shopping. Sainsbury’s was the first supermarket to put nutritional labels on the front of products when we introduced our Wheel of Health MTL label in January 2005 and 4,500 of our products now carry these labels. The body of consumer research into nutritional labels is building over time.
Research carried out among 17,000 people on behalf of Netmums in February 2007 showed that nearly 80 per cent of people preferred the MTL system to the alternative scheme, which details guideline daily allowances (“GDAs”) on the front of packs. GDAs are useful and we have put them on the back of our packaging for many years. We were also the first retailer to provide specific GDAs for children, but MTL labels are even more effective because they give customers the simple ‘at-a-glance’ information they want as they shop in store.
Research from the Department of Health (“DoH”) showed that, while people are aware of the concept of alcoholic units, they find it difficult to judge how many they are drinking. In February we became the first retailer to adopt the DoH’s proposed voluntary guidelines on the labelling of alcohol. We have applied labelling on all our own brand beers, wines and spirits, encouraging sensible drinking by helping people better understand the effects of alcohol.
Our work on labelling was just one of the initiatives singled out last November by the National Consumer Council when it named Sainsbury’s the ‘healthiest supermarket’. We also organised and hosted an event called ‘New Ideas for Health’ in September 2006 to move forward the debate about food and health. Around 100 parents and professionals, including Caroline Flint, Minister for Public Health, joined us in this discussion. We are all increasingly aware of health issues but this event went further by trying to identify the barriers to addressing problems, looking at who should take responsibility for doing this and coming up with some solutions.
Following the event we pledged to keep the discussion going and began a three-year partnership with MEND, the UK’s largest prevention and treatment programme for overweight and obese children and their families. The national partnership will see 450 MEND programmes rolled out over the next three years following a trial in eight areas. The trial delivered significant improvements to the health, wellbeing and self-confidence of participants. This is the first programme of this scale sponsored by a private company. It is being run by fully trained Sainsbury’s Food Advisors with the assistance of a local Youth Sport Trust colleague.
