Where you shop can have a significant effect on your health and the leading supermarkets are highly variable when it comes to encouraging healthier eating, a new report from the National Consumer Council (NCC) warns today.

A new Health Responsibility Index league table to score retailers on their healthy eating practices, launched today by the NCC, found leading stores - Tesco, Asda and Morrisons -rating behind Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and the Co-op.

Launching the new report, Rating Retailers for Health, NCC Chair, Deirdre Hutton, said, ‘Most of us buy most of our food in supermarkets which places a huge responsibility on them to work to improve the diet and health of their customers. Supermarkets have made positive changes but they need to do more. Our report shows that where you shop can have a real impact. We’ve looked at the major supermarkets and how they promote the food they sell and, although we found some positives, none shone and not a single one did well across all our health indicators.

The NCC developed its Health Responsibility Index to spot check supermarkets’ policies and practices for healthy eating. The indicators measure and compare company performance in four key areas:

• nutritional value of ten everyday, own-label processed foods - focusing on salt;
• clear labelling or a recipe for confusion – the information provided and whether interpreted, such as high, medium or low, or other signposting such as traffic lights;
• in-store promotions of healthy versus less healthy foods – shelf-space dedicated to fruit compared to less healthy snacks, such as crisps, biscuits or sweets; whether stores had sweets or other less healthy snacks at the checkout;
• • in-store information/advice for customers on healthy eating.

Ranking the retailers overall - Waitrose came in first, followed by Sainsbury’s, the Co-op third and M&S fourth; Tesco and Safeway took equal fifth place and Asda seventh; struggling to keep up, Somerfield and Morrisons were placed eighth and ninth.

The big four - Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons (incorporating Safeway) all have room for improvement. Sainsbury’s, in second place, scored well on its quality of customer information and on removing snacks off the checkout, but needs to do more to reduce salt levels and extend labelling. Tesco took the middle ground and is weak in a number of key areas – particularly in reducing salt. It needs to boost its customer information and advice and raise its game on labelling.

Deirdre Hutton added, ‘While we weren’t surprised to see Waitrose, a top-end retailer, do relatively well, it’s worrying that we found retailers with a high proportion of lower income shoppers appearing to reinforce the health inequalities between rich and poor. The Co-op was the one company that bucked this trend.

‘The big four supermarkets - where we spend three quarters of our national food bill - could really make a difference by cutting salt, sugar and fat, improving labelling and information, doing more to promote healthier foods and taking sweets off the checkout.’

The NCC looked at a range of everyday foods that people regularly put in their shopping baskets, including sausages, bread, yoghurt, pasta sauce, pizza, and found huge variations in the amounts of salt, sugar, and fat both between the supermarkets and also between supermarkets’ own standard ranges and their ‘healthy eating’ options.

The evidence in Rating Retailers supports the recommendations in the Public Health White Paper, Choosing Health, for reducing salt, sugar and fat in processed foods. It also endorses recommendations for clearer food labelling, including signposting, and consistent messages about healthier choices. The NCC is calling for retailers to develop clear targets for improvements across the NCC health indicators and for the Food Standards Agency and Department of Health to audit progress of the supermarkets each year.

The full report can be found at: http://www.ncc.org.uk/food/rating_retailers.pdf