Survival and support
BHF teams up with Tesco and other health charities to support the nation's health
In an open letter to the Health and Social Care Secretary, BHF, Tesco and two other leading health charity partners are urging the UK Government to make healthier food sales reporting mandatory for all supermarkets and major food businesses.
Obesity is costing the health service around £6.5 billion a year
At its Health Charity Partnership summit last week, we met with Tesco Group CEO Ken Murphy as well as the CEOs from Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK to discuss how we can help people lead longer, healthier lives. With obesity costing the health service around £6.5 billion a year and affecting millions of people across the country, our partnership with Tesco is calling on the UK Government to implement mandatory healthier food sales reporting, using a set of agreed and consistent health metrics, to improve the health of the nation.
Obesity increases the risk of heart disease, cancer, 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, with an inconsistency in how businesses report on the healthiness of their food and drink sales, it is difficult to assess the progress that is being made across the industry.
Food businesses have a crucial role in supporting people to lead healthier lives
Food businesses are often at the heart of communities, and have an important role to play 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. An increased transparency in healthier food sales reporting can support more evidence-led policy and better-targeted health interventions.
Tesco is on track to meet its 65% 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.
How our partnership with Tesco is making an impact on improving people’s health
Our Chief Executive, Dr Charmaine Griffiths said: “A healthy, balanced diet is essential to good heart health throughout our lives, and the major supermarkets have a key role in helping people achieve this. The Charity Partnership with Tesco, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK is already making a real impact on improving people’s health, but there is more to do.
“There is no doubt that mandatory reporting on healthier food sales will drive improvements across the food industry, and it is great to see a leading retailer like Tesco already transparently sharing their progress.
“We urge governments across the UK to adopt this measure as soon as possible. Doing so would mark a major step forward towards a world in which people's hearts are healthier, for longer.”