Examination of Witnesses (Questions 900-914)
THURSDAY 27 NOVEMBER
MR ANDREW
COSSLETT, MR
JULIAN HILTON-JOHNSON,
MR MARTIN
GLENN AND
MR TIM
MOBSBY
Q900 Dr Naysmith: It is more than a slight
bias. There are figures that show that there is a significant
bias.
Mr Glenn: Let us not argue about
the data; let us argue about the trend.
Q901 Dr Naysmith: If you are badly off
then it is a much higher proportion of your diet.
Mr Glenn: I was just referring
specifically to the categories I am responsible for. The general
point is important and then it comes down to the importance of
education. The other thing that I might add, if I could, is if
we refer to things as "unnecessary snacks", and again
do not go with the grain of how people are living their lives
with lots of mothers working nowadays, the break down of mealtimes,
and we look back fondly to a point in time when children said
"please" and "thank you" and had three meals
a day, it is not like that any more.
Q902 Dr Naysmith: I understand how society
has changed but you spend millions of pounds every year advertising
to try to get people to eat this sort of thing. If you did not
do that then there would be fewer snacks consumed surely.
Mr Glenn: I thought we had covered
that argument.
Q903 Dr Naysmith: We covered that earlier
but we are coming back to it. It was you who brought us back to
it.
Mr Glenn: Then I have happily
served my purpose for this Committee. The fact of the matter is
that food and drink advertising as a potential of total advertising
has significantly decreased in real terms.
Q904 Dr Naysmith: I cannot quite hear
what you are saying.
Mr Glenn: Sorry. The fact of the
matter is that food and drink advertising as a percentage of total
advertising over the last 15 years has decreased in real terms
quite significantly. You have to put that bit of data into the
understanding of the question, which is if that is the case why
has there not—
Q905 Dr Naysmith: You are saying that
advertising has decreased over the last 15 years?
Mr Glenn: In real terms it has
decreased because there are so many more categories advertising.
The Government spends £140 million a year; banks advertise
more than they ever used to. Yes, as a proportion and the number
of impacts, it has decreased.
Q906 Dr Naysmith: As a proportion that
is relative. The amount of advertising has not decreased.
Mr Glenn: With respect, the relative
point is very critical because the consumer's capacity to store
and remember messages is pretty finite, so the relative share
of voices, as we call them within the industry, is a significant
factor. If you just take it as read and it is correct data that
the relative impact of food and drink, and within it the kind
of categories that we represent, has gone down, then had it been—
Q907 Dr Naysmith: I am not saying it
is the only the reason, obviously people are better off and they
have more money to spend on these things, but it must have a significant
effect otherwise you guys would not spend so much money on it.
Mr Glenn: We are commercial businesses
and we like to think we spend money for a point. I guess the critical
point in markets like ours is it seems to have more of an effect
on driving individual brands than it does the total market. It
is very difficult to create new demand. Advertisers and marketeers
go with the flow of how consumers live their lives.
Q908 Dr Naysmith: I am not sure about
that. I think there is a lot of evidence that you can create new
demands.
Mr Cosslett: I would just like
to make one point of clarification so it is on the record. The
consumption of confectionery, for what it is worth, completely
mirrors the national income groups, and social demographics, and
as far as this organisation, this business, is concerned that
is not the case.
Q909 Mr Burstow: Can I pick up Mr Cosslett's
point earlier on about we do not have junk foods, we have junk
diets and go back to what you were saying to us earlier on in
reference to your own concern about a pot of yoghurt that you
consumed that was far worse than you were led to believe by the
labelling. Do you not think that lesson you draw from that yoghurt
pot and what it said to you, and how it misled you, is not something
that we should try and make sure is a general lesson that we try
and apply to all food products?
Mr Cosslett: I think misleading
claims on labels are wrong and should be dealt with. I think that
is the job of the food industry to go and fix. We have been making
progress on that as an industry but there are still ways that
some people claim fat free this and sugar free that. One of the
reasons why we have not been in a rush to do sugar free chocolate
is because the actual calorie content stays the same. We are struggling
with that issue of how you make it clear what the difference is.
We treat it very, very seriously because there are people being
deluded on a daily basis about what they are buying and they do
not know. That extends to products which are generally healthy,
I know, but still have high calorific values.
Q910 Mr Burstow: Presumably the producer
of that yoghurt could be here today and could say there is no
such thing as a bad food and that food could be part of a balanced
diet.
Mr Cosslett: Correct.
Q911 Mr Burstow: If they could say that
how could I as a consumer purchasing that product, how could you
as a consumer purchasing that product, come to a view as to whether
or not it should be one a week, two a week or none a week? How
do we make those decisions?
Mr Cosslett: I think there is
a difference in the understanding of product categories. Most
people would think of yoghurt as a generally healthier category.
The very great majority of people understand that confectionery
is a treat and that is a conscious decision. Yoghurt, you would
assume, has a certain health profile and when you see a low fat
yoghurt with a clear statement drawing attention to the fact it
is low fat, you would be doubly convinced and it would reinforce
your instinct that this is a `good' product. It is only when you
get it home and examine the calories that you find it has got
200-plus calories in it, which was a surprise to me and I have
been in the industry for a long time. I do think we need it to
be very simple. As we said right at the start, I think some general
collective ability to work on better and more simple labelling
would be great, but it does not just affect the prepacked industry
and packaged food industry, with respect, 40 per cent of the food
that is consumed in this country has no labelling on it whatsoever,
and that is growing, it is doubling in size every ten years. That
is where we could make a very important start. It is difficult
because it means you have got to get to the fish and chip shops
and you have got to get to the pubs and you have got to get to
the burger vans and to Indian restaurants. That is where the food
market is expanding rapidly. If you look at the latest Neilson
figures, that is Neilson syndicated data for the food industry,
I think it shows we have got some really encouraging signs in
what people are buying. The sales of fruit and vegetables are
up double digits for the last two years. Sales of low fat ready
meals are increasing. I think the messages are starting to work,
five a day and things like that, but it needs to be a universal
approach rather than just taking on the grocery industry.
Q912 Chairman: On your yoghurt example
and the point about simplifying labelling, I agree with what you
were saying. We established earlier on this morning that the energy
in, energy out issue is crucial. I got the impression, Mr Hilton-Johnson,
from your answers that you would need to make the message clearer
in relation to calorific content and energy output, etc. How would
you feel about some kind of simplified labelling along the lines
of high energy dense, medium energy dense, low energy dense, to
pick up the point you were making a moment or two that this needs
to be simplified and consistent? I accept the point you made that
fish and chips would come into it, etc., but how do you feel about
something along those lines that would simplify it and make it
consistent?
Mr Glenn: I am all in favour of
simplicity but not being overtly simple. From what we have learned
about low fat diets over the years, and high fibre diets before
that, you can get fat on a low fat diet, you can get fat on a
high fibre diet. The risk you run is if you do a traffic light
system, which thinking about what you were saying it looked like
that, you would get too simplistic a message, that people can
over-indulge in anything and get fat. I come back to the common
currency that we could do with educating about what is the calorie,
give people that information and let them then work out the rest,
hopefully within part of a unified approach to education in this
area, which is clearly lacking which is why we have got the problem
that we have.
Q913 Chairman: Would that view be the
general consensus amongst your colleagues?
Mr Mobsby: I would say exactly
the same thing. The notion of trying to define foods, I am not
sure how the consumer can use it. At the end of the day we have
got to make this helpful, informative and meaningful for them.
For me, calories would be the logical place to go. If we bear
in mind that the calorific density of fat is much higher than
carbohydrates, if you use calories you are automatically going
to be sending some other messages as well that will potentially
lead to reorientation. I think calories is a basic good indicator
and if we can keep it at something simple like that, which may
also transfer across when we think about energy expenditure, so
we have got that thing that can work on both sides of the equation,
I am far more inclined to believe we would have something simple
that people can get to grips with.
Mr Hilton-Johnson: We are agreed
it is complex and there needs to be a simple solution and a consistent
solution. Whatever solution is implemented—and calories
appears to be as good as any in my mind when dealing with the
restaurant sector—the information has to be provided before
the point of purchase. It is no good if you find out that your
chicken meal or your beef meal contains X amount of calories when
it is sitting on the plate in front of you.
Q914 Dr Naysmith: I wanted to clear up
something with Mr Glenn, the suggestion is that there is evidence
to suggest that advertising for fast food has increased enormously
over the last 10 years, there has been a huge increase in that.
The second point is that amongst children's advertising food advertising
is dominant and has been for the last five decades—I imagine
that is not true in the period up to Christmas, there will be
something else taking over children's advertising.
Mr Glenn: I do not dispute that.
We do not categorise ourselves as the fast food industry, our
categorisation would be the prepared food industry, and so the
two statements can be compatible.
Chairman: Mr Amess apologises for leaving
early, he says if you leave any free samples could you leave him
some as well. You have promised to come back with a few points.
Thank you very much for your time.
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