UK | In an open letter to the Health and Social Care Secretary, Tesco and its three leading health charity partners are urging the UK Government to make healthier food sales reporting mandatory for all supermarkets and major food businesses.
At its Health Charity Partnership summit last week, Tesco Group CEO Ken Murphy met with CEOs from Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK to discuss how they can help people lead longer, healthier lives.
“There are more people living with obesity in the UK than ever before. Tesco, along with the food industry, has a critical part to play in supporting preventive health measures, through giving access to affordable, healthier, quality food,” said Murphy.
“Through our partnership with Diabetes UK, Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation, we have shown that collaboration can drive meaningful change. But to truly support public health, we need consistent, transparent reporting across the industry. We urge the UK Government to take this important step forward to make healthier food sales reporting mandatory.”
With obesity costing the NHS around GBP 6.5 billion a year and affecting millions of people across the country, Tesco and its charity partners are calling on the UK Government to implement mandatory healthier food sales reporting, using a set of agreed-upon and consistent health metrics, to improve the nation's health.
Obesity increases the risk of cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and other conditions, and it is essential that the food industry works together to support the UK Government’s approach to preventing ill health.
However, due to inconsistencies in how businesses report the healthiness of their food and drink sales, it is challenging to assess the progress being made across the industry.
Food businesses are often at the heart of communities and play an essential role in creating, promoting, and providing healthy food. Tesco remains committed to taking a leading role to supporting our customers to lead healthier lives and tackling the barriers that they face, including affordability, lack of access to healthy food, or a lack of time, knowledge or inspiration when making healthier choices. Increased transparency in healthier food sales reporting can support more evidence-based policy and better-targeted health interventions.
Tesco is on track to meet its 65 percent healthier sales target by the end of this year, which is being achieved through interventions including voluntarily removing multi-buy promotions on less healthy products and the reformulation of own-brand products to reduce salt, fat and sugar.
