Force food firms to disclose product shelf life values, industry chief urges

Food companies should be forced to disclose how healthy or unhealthy their products are, to help people eat better, an industry boss has said.

Ministers should force companies to publish an annual report so that consumers can see how much of their sales are made up of dishes with high fat, salt and sugar, Stéfan Descheemaeker also said.

Descheemaeker is the chief executive of Nomad Foods, which owns popular brands such as Birds Eye fish fingers, Findus frozen meals and Goodfella pizzas.

He told the Guardian that mandatory disclosure of what proportion of each firm’s sales is healthy or unhealthy under government guidelines would start “a race of the nutritional arsenal” that manufacturers will compete to make their products better for health.

He even asked the health secretary of Wes Streeting to ensure that all tins and packages of food have the same letters as traffic lights. This can also help tackle the obesity problem because it can encourage people to choose nutritious foods and avoid unhealthy habits, he said.

And he lost weight after growing calls – backed by the House of Lords and the Labor-hosted Public Policy Research Institute – for a new tax on salty products or too much sugar.

His comments highlight what one food activist called a “quiet shift” underway in the industry in its views on how best to tackle the UK’s addiction to junk food. More and more producers want the government to now order the sector to improve its behavior, instead of relying on voluntary agreements as the Conservatives did during the 14 years of government.

“We support measures that require companies to publish data. We believe that requiring all food companies to do this will drive the nutrition arms race, kickstart an industry reform agenda, and ultimately increasing production, sales and consumption of delicious, healthy food,” Descheemaeker said in an interview.

Seven years ago Nomad published figures showing the percentage of its online sales considered healthy under the government’s nutrient profiling system for judging which products contain fat, salt and sugar right or wrong. It was now 93.3% healthy overall, he said, according to the fat, sugar or salt screening system (HFSS).

Public disclosure of food industry sales could lead to the creation of league tables that would allow those whose products are often unhealthy to be named and shamed, advocates say.

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Iceland and yoghurt maker Danone have already made it clear they support mandatory reporting. The last government brought in a “food data transparency partnership” with the industry aimed at putting the company’s sales data in the public domain. Although it was considered mandatory, it became a voluntary measure after industry protests.

“We believe that mandatory nutrition labeling can play an important role in helping the public understand what is healthy and what is not,” said Descheemaeker. “We’ve seen this work in other European markets, such as France, where ‘nutri-scores’ have been shown to influence informed purchasing decisions.”

Some shops and retailers in the UK use color-coded labels on some or all of their products to alert customers to how healthy or unhealthy they are, but the system is voluntary.

Both measures will force food manufacturers to change their products by reducing the amount of fat, salt and sugar in them, said Descheemaeker. Doing so is easier than other firms have claimed, he added. He cited how Nomad has improved the nutritional profile of Goodfella’s pizzas since buying the brand in 2018, removing fat, salt and calories and adding more fiber, so that they now comply with HFSS guidelines. as a healthy product.

Nomad has also reduced the amount of sugar in Aunt Bessie’s apple crumble by 30% and added 15% more fiber so it too now counts as HFSS. As of 2020 the company has also reduced the amount of salt in some of its products such as Birds Eye fish fingers (21%) and potato waffles (28%) for the same reason.

He said the scale of Britain’s obesity problem was so great, with poor diets leading to major diseases such as obesity and cancer, that the food industry as a whole needed to show more “responsibility” to improve public health.

James Toop, chief executive of chef Jamie Oliver’s Bite Back food campaign, said that making data transparent is essential to change the situation in which many large food companies rely on sales. of non-living products for their profit.

“Our research this year has shown that our biggest UK food manufacturers have made huge profits by selling unhealthy products. It is encouraging to see a growing number of food industry leaders who openly support the government’s bold move to improve the nutritional quality of what they sell,” he said.

“This quiet change taking place in the UK food industry – with companies realizing their part in reducing food waste and committing to healthier products – is one we should all be supporting Many of these leaders have made it clear that they want policy-based government policies, not just voluntary reforms, so everyone is held to a higher standard. the same.

“It is important that we see measures such as mandatory reporting on healthy sales and front-of-pack lighting to hold companies accountable for offering healthy food alternatives.”

Last week the House of Lords committee on food, diet and nutrition and obesity urged ministers to take a more aggressive approach to the food industry to help tackle obesity as a “public health emergency”.

It wanted a standard reporting of sales data, a new model of salt and sugar tax made up of sugar tax, and “to move from voluntary measures to a mandatory industrial control system of food”.

Earlier this year Streeting warned food companies that a Labor government would use a “steamroller” to force them to change their products, but he has yet to take any follow-up action. that since he became health secretary in July. It is understood that he favors reform rather than taxing salty and sugary products based on the cost of health problems.

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We are taking a number of steps to tackle the problem of obesity – shifting our focus from treatment to prevention – to reduce the pressure on the NHS which is critical and help people live well for a long time.

“We are taking a number of measures including, banning the advertising of junk food on television and the internet, strengthening the courts to prevent the development of new fast food outlets outside schools, and banning the sale of alcoholic beverages to persons under 16 years of age.

“Our 10-year health plan will transform the NHS by moving from illness to prevention.”