News that the UK Government plans to introduce a healthy food standard generated plenty of column inches when it broke over the summer. Announced in the 10 year health plan for England, the policy will require large food businesses to report publicly on the healthiness of their food sales and meet future targets
At the time, a lot of coverage focused on the impact mandatory targets would have on the big supermarkets, which collectively dominate UK food sales. Less discussed was how it would impact foodservice and hospitality sector businesses, despite the policy purporting to apply to all large food companies. Now, Nesta, the innovation agency for social good which developed the original proposal, has published a report modelling what a healthy food standard might look like for the out of home sector.
The headline finding is that – yes – a healthy food standard can be made to work for out of home businesses despite the huge variation in their format and product offering compared with supermarkets. However, Nesta recommends the government adopt a staged approach to implementation by first setting targets for retailers and then extending the scope of the requirements to the out of home sector.
The rationale is two-fold: not only are out of home businesses a much more diverse group than retailers, spanning restaurants, pubs, cafes, hotel chains, catering companies and others, they also tend to be in possession of less sophiscated, granular data, as previous government reformulation programmes have found to their cost.
Still, Nesta believes health targets represent “a feasible, impactful regulatory option” for the sector. Its modelling shows that applying targets to the approximately 700 businesses currently captured by mandatory calorie labelling legislation (those with 250+ employees) has the potential to reduce calorie intake among populations living with overweight and obesity by an average of 7 kcal per person per day, while also being achievable and economically viable for a majority of the market.
As for the specifics, Nesta is proposing two possible measures of healthiness as being most appropriate for the sector – sales weighted average energy per product and sales weighted average nutrient profiling model score. Both metrics come with trade-offs, with the former not a holistic measure of nutrition and the latter not taking into account portion size. Both would also require out of home businesses to track and report the sales volumes of their products alongside their nutritional content and link the two, something that doesn’t currently happen consistently throughout the sector.
The size and heterogeneity of the out of home market means it wouldn’t be possible to follow an absolute target approach (as Nesta has already recommended for retailers) whereby a target is set based on the current best in class. Rather, a target would need to be relative to each business’s own baseline or be grouped according to business type – for example with contract caterers, casual dining chains, quick service restaurants etcetera each grouped together.
Businesses could use strategies including reformulation, new product development and portion sizing to hit the targets as well as nudge tactics like positioning healthier items in more prominent positions on menus.
The healthy food standard is a flagship government food policy and one that out of home businesses would be well advised to keep close tabs on as it develops.
Moving to matters further from home, world leaders (although not all of them) have gathered in Belém, Brazil for the COP30 climate summit. Ten years on from the Paris Agreement, there is a real sense of jeopardy surrounding this year’s summit as the goal to limit global heating to 1.5°C recedes into the distance. The absence of the leaders of the world’s three largest emitters – US, China and India – has cast a shadow over proceedings, with US President Donald Trump especially intent on ripping up the global consensus on tackling climate change.
More positively, food is now embedded as a formal pillar of COP summits with November 19th and 20th dedicated to agriculture, food, and fisheries. With the summit due to end on November 21st, Footprint will keep across all of the key outcomes over the next fortnight.
Elsewhere in news this week:
