Memorandum by the British Retail Consortium
(OB 99)
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) represents
the whole range of retailers including large multiples, department
stores and independent shops, selling a wide selection of products
through centre of town, out of town, rural and virtual stores.
In June 2003, the retail sector employed some 2.7 million people
(11% of the workforce) and retail sales were £230 billion
in 2002. Grocery retailing is significant in macro economic terms
and was valued in 2002 at £111.3 billion.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
— Latest data from the Department of
Health show that more than half of UK adults are officially overweight
or obese. The prevalence of obesity (severely overweight) has
doubled in the past decade and now affects more than 15% of the
adult population.
— Overweight and obesity result from
an energy imbalance. Put simply, this involves balancing the energy
intake with energy expenditure. Food is only one part of the equation.
— The UK is not a homogenous society
and many factors influence body weight including genes, metabolism,
behaviour, environment and cultural factors.
— Medical opinion believes that behaviour
and environment are important influences in causing people to
become overweight and obese.
— It is therefore these areas that
offer the greatest opportunities for prevention such as encouraging
physical activity through the provision of safe accessible places
for children to play or adults to walk, jog, or ride a bike.
— The British Retail Consortium and
its members are committed to playing their part in helping consumers
maintain a healthy weight and to support those who wish to tackle
overweight and obesity.
— Health professionals work from the
widely accepted principle that there are no good and bad foods,
only good and bad diets. Government's Balance of Good Health
seeks to promote this fundamental truth. It is a principle that
retailers' wholeheartedly endorse.
— Retailers play an important role
in championing healthy weight management by working with health
professionals to support innovative nutrition education and physical
activity initiatives to meet their customers' needs. These activities
have typically involved:
— Developing products to provide reduced
fat or lower calorie options while delivering good taste.
— Developing clear labelling with easy
to understand nutritional information.
— Providing a wide and increasingly varied
range of fruits and vegetables as well as promoting the "5-a-day"
message.
— Providing a wide range of fresh foods
from which customers can prepare meals.
— Developing easy to make healthier recipe
suggestions and meal plans.
— Working with schools to promote healthy
eating.
— Producing customer web information and
literature (such as fact sheets, leaflets, magazine articles and
recipe cards) to educate consumers and provide easy solutions
for healthier ways of eating.
— Working to make improvements in the nutritional
profile of standard products.
— Supporting weight management programmes.
— Food retailers already play an active
part in delivering this message and by providing a wide range
of well-labelled, convenient, attractive and accessible products,
which allow their customers to opt for a healthier approach to
food and drink.
— The BRC believes that policy makers
should focus their efforts on developing clear, consistent messages
within a consumer education campaign to promote healthy weight
management as part of a healthy lifestyle.
BACKGROUND
1. Latest data from the Department of Health
show that more than half of UK adults are officially overweight
or obese. The prevalence of obesity (severely overweight) has
doubled in the past decade and now affects more than 15% of the
adult population. Obesity increases the risk of many chronic diseases—including
coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, degenerative joint
diseases, and some cancers.
2. Overweight and obesity result from an
energy imbalance. Put simply, this involves balancing the energy
intake with energy expenditure. We are not a homogenous society
and many factors influence body weight including genes, metabolism,
behaviour, environment and cultural factors. Medical opinion also
believes that behaviour and environment are important influences
in causing people to become overweight and obese. It is therefore
these areas that offer the greatest opportunities for prevention
such as encouraging physical activity through the provision of
safe accessible places for children to play or adults to walk,
jog, or ride a bike.
3. That diet, along with exercise and the
management of stress, plays a central role in our health is unquestionable.
Eating a balanced and varied diet is consequently one of the Government's
key messages for a healthy lifestyle, and one that Britain's food
retailers have wholeheartedly endorsed. It should therefore be
of no surprise that food retailers have welcomed the coordination
by the Department of Health of the development of a unified healthy
eating plan. It is a hugely positive move and retailers are working
with all Government Departments and Agencies to produce an effective
plan.
4. The BRC believes that all policy should
be firmly based on sound evidence. Too often, policies have foundered
when factoids have been mistaken for facts. Unfortunately, the
food arena is an area where factoids abound and a re-examination
of realities may be helpful:
— Health professionals and retailers
work from the widely accepted principle that there are no good
and bad foods, only good and bad diets. Indeed, Government's Balance
of Good Health seeks to highlight this fundamental truth.
An undue concentration on particular foods or nutrients may lead
to unhelpful consequences, either in terms of message dilution
or even dietary imbalance.
— Government has recognised that diet
is a matter of personal choice and that neither it, food retailers,
restaurateurs nor anyone else can force consumers to lead healthier
lives. While Government has a duty to set out the risks, ultimately
it is for the consumer to decide how he or she wishes to live.
It may be easy to believe that we can simply be directed to choose
particular foods or adopt particular diets, but nothing can be
further from the truth as the rise, or fall, of particular foods,
or indeed food businesses underlines.
— That the British population has better
access to a greater variety of food choices than ever before is
self-evident, but needs stating. Gone are the days of geographic
or seasonal rationing. With over 60,000 food-retailing businesses
and over 35,000 restaurants, bars and cafes, the modern British
food economy is one of the most competitive in the world.
— Eating out, now accounting for around
28% of all our spending on food and drink, is continuing to grow.
The largest nine multiple food retailers account for approximately
43% of food spending, co-operatives around 6%, and convenience
stores 12%. The remainder covers discounters, specialist shops
and smaller supermarkets. The huge range of food outlets again
underlines the need for policy makers to focus on the whole diets
of different social groups, rather than on individual products.
8. The challenge for policy makers therefore
must be to provide the framework within which consumers can be
encouraged and supported to choose healthier diets as part of
healthier lifestyles. What is important is that a cultural shift
occurs, allowing dietary changes to adjust in tandem with our
changing lifestyles.
HEALTHY OPTIONS
9. British food retailers have long been
committed to playing their part in providing a balanced and varied
diet for their customers and are at the forefront of helping their
customers overcome the factors that are perceived to act as barriers
to healthy eating. The Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD)
identified these as including a lack of time and motivation, a
decline in family eating, an increase in snacking, and a rise
in eating alone.
10. In response retailers have invested
heavily in new product development, introduced nutrition labelling
and pioneered consumer communication strategies[1]The
fierce competition, which exists between food retailers, has also
ensured that healthy eating is more visible, convenient, attractive
and accessible to a wider range of consumers.
http://www.brc.org.uk/showDoc.asp?id=507
11. While each retailer has addressed its
initiatives to its own customers, these activities have typically
involved:
— Developing products to provide reduced
fat or lower calorie options while delivering good taste.
— Developing clear labelling with easy
to understand nutritional information.
— Providing a wide and increasingly
varied range of fruits and vegetables as well as promoting the
"5-a-day" message.
— Providing a wide range of fresh foods
from which customers can prepare meals.
— Developing easy to make healthier
recipe suggestions and meal plans.
— Working with schools to promote healthy
eating.
— Producing customer web information
and literature (such as fact sheets, leaflets, magazine articles
and recipe cards) to educate consumers and provide easy solutions
for healthier ways of eating.
— Supporting weight management programmes.
— Working to make improvements in the
nutritional profile of standard products.
12. Britain's food retailers have made significant
investments in producing convenient healthy eating products that
meet the needs of consumers. (There are currently over 4,250 such
retailer branded products- with sales exceeding £1 billion).
The development of ranges of healthy eating products fits into
modern lifestyles, with brand identities allowing healthier options
to be easily distinguished from standard options.
13. Healthy option branding has itself acted
as a spur to innovation in this area as the use of brand identity
acts as a "signpost" for consumers; making products
more easily identifiable and therefore facilitating purchases
given many consumers' lack of time. All food retailers' healthy
option brands include specific statements on why the product is
healthier.
14. A recent ICM Survey[2]found
that 50% of consumers considered that "healthy eating"
brands help them find products with lower levels of salt, fat
or sugar.
15. However, the BRC is deeply concerned
that the EU Proposal on Nutrition and Health Claims is, in its
present form, overly prescriptive in its approach. This could
give rise to unintended consequences, including discouraging product
innovation by the food industry. Such outcomes would clearly be
undesirable as they would be detrimental to consumers.
NUTRITIONAL PROFILES
16. Retailers work to make improvements
in the nutritional profile of standard products has often gone
relatively unnoticed, but does emphasise the commitments made
by food retailers to the healthy eating debate. In recent years
several food retailers have been focusing their efforts on salt
reduction. At industry level the British Retail Consortium worked
with the Federation of Bakers to bring about an industry wide
reduction in salt levels in plant baked, sliced bread, which is
an important staple food for many parts of the population. Retailers
have successfully built on this initiative by implementing salt-minimisation
policies across all products. Food retailers believe that, rather
than merely targeting individual lines, this approach is more
suited to today's consumers given the choice and diversity of
products available.
17. This "Shopping Basket" or
"Whole Diet" approach recognises the population's varied
diet and ensures that the benefits of these policies reach all
consumers. Since 1998, retailers have typically reduced salt content
in own brand processed foods by between 10 and 15%.
18. Product profiles may also be enhanced
through the addition of nutrients, for example the addition of
folic acid to breakfast cereals. These enhancements help the industry
to develop more targeted solutions to the diverse needs of the
UK population.
CONCLUSION
19. Retailers are convinced that Government
has the major role to play in achieving this cultural shift through
developing educational campaigns that encourage consumers to appreciate
the components of a healthy diet by providing clear, simple, consistent
and scientifically credible messages. We support Government utilising
the key messages contained within the Balance of Good Health
as a core driver in any communication campaign.
20. How the message that consumers should
aim to eat a balanced and varied diet as part of a healthy lifestyle
is most effectively delivered, is the next question. Clearly Government
is in a prime position to do this through its everyday interaction
with the population; in both the physical context that schools,
doctors surgery's, hospitals and libraries offer, but also through
the many channels of communication that exist between central
and local government and citizens.
21. History shows us that Government has
been successful in designing public health and safety campaigns
covering such issues as seat belts and drink-driving. While there
are some who will inevitably ignore the message, the campaigns
were a key factor in achieving a change in societal attitudes.
By working more closely with food retailers on the key messages
contained within the Balance of Good Health, Government
will be able to maximise the potential for providing consumers
with straightforward, meaningful messages.
22. In summary, retailers believe that policy
makers should focus their efforts on developing clear, consistent
messages within a consumer education campaign to promote a balanced
diet as part of a healthy lifestyle. Food retailers have already
done a lot. They stand ready to play their part in delivering
this message and by providing a wide range of well-labelled, convenient,
attractive and accessible products, which allow their customers
to opt for a healthier approach to food and drink.
November 2003
1 More information on retailer initiatives towards
healthier eating is available in "Eat Well, Drink Well." Back
2
ICM Omnibus Survey conducted 20-21 August 2003, surveying 1,014
respondents. Back
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