ATNi (Access to Nutrition initiative) has long called for transparency of healthy sales as part of its work with the food industry, investors and policy makers to shape healthier food systems. Footprint spoke to its executive director Greg Garrett after the UK Government confirmed it will require big food businesses to report on the healthiness of food sales and set future targets.
Footprint: The proposal for mandatory reporting of healthy sales and future targets has been described as “world-leading” by the UK Government. You have a global outlook on such things. Is that a fair description?
Greg Garrett (GG): We were very excited to see it because this is the kind of government leadership that we would like to see in many other countries. This is what we’ve been calling for. [As for] it being the first in the world? I think one other country should be mentioned here: Norway, about three months ago, became the first country to say that retailers and food and beverage manufacturers can no longer market unhealthy foods to children anywhere, including on digital channels, all the way up to 18 years of age. The UK policy is not about marketing per se but the UK is certainly one of the few countries doing things to improve the food environment.
Footprint: This is clearly being positioned as a partnership between government and industry rather than a regulatory intervention. The idea is that businesses will be given freedom to meet a future healthy food standard however works best for them. Is that the right approach?
GG: The only thing I can say with certainty is that most voluntary efforts in this direction have not worked over a long period of time. What we hear from industry all the time is that you need a level playing field. So I think that’s the bottom line here. If this partnership, as you call it, between the government and the industry in the UK works to level the playing field and everybody ends up doing it, it’s going to work. If it does not level the playing field, it’s just going to create a situation where a few retailers run ahead and do the right thing for a period of time and then it’ll revert back.
Footprint: It wasn’t entirely clear from the policy announcement what the metrics will be that businesses will be required to report against. What do you feel those key metrics should be when it comes to assessing the healthiness of portfolios and sales?
GG: The two we consistently hear are most valuable from an investor’s perspective are disclosure on the healthiness of food portfolios by sales, and marketing responsibly, which means not marketing unhealthy foods either on digital or traditional channels to children all the way up to 18 years of age. On the first one, our view would be that while there’s no perfect measurement yet of the healthiness of packaged foods, there are measures that are better than others. Our nutrient profiling modelling exercise a year and a half ago showed that the UK nutrient profiling model (NPM) is one of three models that are considered better than the dozens of others that exist [for measuring a product’s healthiness]. The three we encourage companies and investors to use are the UK NPM, the health star rating system out of Australia and New Zealand, and Nutri-Score [used widely across Europe].
Footprint: If you look at the outputs of the government’s Food Data Transparency Partnership health working group, they proposed using three specific metrics for a modelling exercise last year: sales weighted average NPM score, percentage of total product sales from HFSS products, and sales weighted calorie content per 100 grams. Do those sound like reasonable metrics as a starting point?
GG: Yes, I think all three of them build off of each other so it shouldn’t be a heavy burden for a company to be able to report on those. Going back to investors, what they always tell us is that they need one simple metric on this because they’re looking at multiple data points from a food company [beyond just nutrition]. So if you had to pick one out of those three I think it would be the first one on the sales weighted average NPM score, and the other two are nice to have.
Footprint: Is there a risk that if your policy aim is to make the average shopping basket slightly less unhealthy based on nutrient profiling you just end up nudging people from high scoring ultra-processed foods to slightly lower scoring ultra-processed foods, rather than actually encouraging a shift towards minimally processed foods – fruit and vegetables, whole grains etcetera. And if that’s the case, is it really enough to move the dial [on diet-related ill health]?
GG: This goes back to fiscal policies. Based on the trends we’ve looked at, if you’re really going to move the dial away from increased consumption of processed foods you have to make unprocessed foods, and in particular fresh produce, much more affordable. And the only way you’re going to be able to do that is to flip the way the current agricultural subsidies are done. Why are we subsidising corn and corn derivatives, and sugar at such high levels? Could we not consider more subsidies going towards making sure that you have more affordable fresh produce on the shelves? So I do think price comes into play here if you really want to fundamentally change what people are eating.
