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Tesco pioneered clear nutritional labelling in the 1980s, introduced our Healthy Living range over 20 years ago, and launched our Healthy Living Club for our customers three years ago. Over the past year we have put a lot of thought into how Tesco can give even more help to our customers to live more healthily. We are working on improving nutritional information on products, reformulating products so that they are healthier without compromising taste, and are encouraging our customers to be more active, for example through our support for Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life. We do not sell sweets at check-outs in our superstores or target our advertising at children.
From March 2005 we will include a KPI on healthy living in our Corporate Responsibility performance indicators.
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From being the first supermarket to launch a Healthy Living range in 1984, we now have over 500 such products and the volume of sales grew by 17% this year. We continue to work to make healthy food more accessible to all our customers, and now have over 30 Value lines of fresh fruit and vegetables. This year, sales of fruit and vegetables in the UK rose by 12%, and the increase was most marked among our least affluent customers. Click here for further information on our work to make healthy food more accessible. Our Healthy Living Club in the UK provides its 220,000 members with information on how to get fit and stay healthy, as well as providing benefits such as discounts on gym membership and money-off vouchers for healthy products. Our bi-monthly Healthy Living magazine provides practical information on all aspects of a healthy lifestyle. In Poland, our 5-a-day Healthy Living campaign promoting fruit and vegetables in the fight against obesity and cancer is estimated to have reached ten million customers. In Hungary, our Fitt range introduced in 2003 now has more than 60 lines. |
Nutritional information
Simpler and clearer communication of the nutritional content of foods is important in empowering consumers to lead healthy lifestyles. We have been providing clear nutritional information on our products for many years.
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This year we have introduced nutritional 'signposts', a new food labelling system which makes it easier than ever for our customers to make healthier choices as they shop. The amount of salt, fat, saturated fat, sugar and calories in a serving of each product is clearly stated in grams on the front of the packs. The labels also state how much of the guideline daily amount this makes up. By separating the key nutrients, the labels help customers monitor any or all of the areas they are concerned about e.g. salt if they have high blood pressure or calories if they are watching their weight. The simple labelling means that it is easier for customers to stay within their recommended daily amount without doing complicated calculations. The first new-style labels will be introduced in April 2005 and are being rolled out to more products each month. This follows two years of research and development with customers. |
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This year we also introduced labelling on the Glycaemic index (Gi) and carbohydrate content of foods, backed up by information leaflets. This helps people with diabetes and those following a low carbohydrate or Gi-based diets (click here for the Diabetes UK and Gi labelling case study.). Our Free From range of 150 products for customers suffering from food allergies and intolerances to gluten, wheat, nuts and dairy products is also growing in popularity. |
Salt reduction
We have reviewed salt levels in over 1,000 products and removed over 50 million teaspoonfuls of salt, or 282 tonnes, from our customers’ diets. For example, we have reduced the salt content across our frozen Deep Pan Pizza range by an average of 20%. We are going further and faster than the salt minimisation framework established by the British Retail Consortium, and expect to meet or exceed the agreed targets three and a half years earlier than the BRC’s target completion date. In addition to the BRC’s priority areas – soups, pizzas, ready meals, quiches, baked beans, sandwiches, cook-in sauces, breakfast cereals and bread – we are reviewing salt content in product categories such as meat pies and snacks. We are also looking at fat and sugar content in these products.