Eight ways business and government could make healthy eating easier

The obesity epidemic underlines the need for healthy diets, but achieving this is not straightforward. Here we round up how experts think it could be done

Google “healthy eating” and you will be presented with some 73m search results. The wealth of information at our fingertips is overwhelming and often contradictory, but businesses and governments could make it easier for us, as panellists in our recent live discussion explained.

1. Pay employees a living wage

The increased use of foodbanks and lack of holiday feeding schemes for children who receive free school meals during term time is a scandal, says Malcolm Clark, co-ordinator of the Children’s Food Campaign. Food poverty is a huge barrier to healthy eating and companies can do their part by paying employees a living wage.

2. No junk food at the checkout

It’s all too easy to pick up something cheap and unhealthy to silence a grumbling stomach, and this is one of the biggest challenges.

“I am glad that cooking and food education is now back on the school curriculum,” says Clark. “But it is hard when what we are presented with in shops and what is advertised to us on TV, online and on our streets looks very different from the eat well plate.”

One third of junk food is bought on impulse at the checkout, and to that end Tesco, Aldi and Lidi have rolled out “healthy tills” where confectionery items are banned. It’s a step in the right direction, although Tesco was caught selling crisps in its healthy eating section back in March.

3. Promote healthy choices
Simply dissuading customers from throwing a bar of chocolate into their trolley as they edge closer to the till isn’t enough. Clark says businesses must fundamentally change their promotional activity; doing far less promotion of high fat, salt and sugar products as well as more on the healthy side.

Some companies are better at this than others. The Co-op recently announced it was investing £125m to help cut the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables, while ananalysis of Morrisons’ 200 new low-price cuts found the only fruit or vegetable included was frozen peas.

4. More meat-free options

Nobody is saying meat should be taken off the shelves completely, but we consume a serious amount of it and that needs to change from an environmental and health perspective. 

Simply giving consumers more meat-free options is one solution, says Sue Dibb, coordinator of Eating Better. Its recent survey of lunchtime sandwich choices in eight UK supermarkets found 97% contained meat, fish, cheese or eggs, meaning only 17 out of 620 were plant-based.

5. Encourage a healthy lifestyle

Putting money into short-term measures to promote physical activity while continuing to push unhealthy products, is what Clark refers to as “obesity offsetting”.

While encouraging healthy lifestyles among employees and suppliers is positive, Dan Crossley, executive director of the Food Ethics Council, agrees that the legitimacy of doing so to the general public largely depends on the ethos of the company and what their product offering is.

Clark points out that Coca-Cola is at least promoting its Coca-Cola Zero at the Rugby World Cup later this year rather than its full sugar Coca-Cola as it did with its London Olympics sponsorship, but stresses that a healthy lifestyle “is about what goes into your body and the effects that can have, not just running around a bit to burn off a few calories”.

6. Consider sugary drink tax

Food companies have a lot of power in regard to economic prosperity and financial growth. As seen with the recent merge of Heinz and Kraft, concentration in the food industry means this power is increasing, says Ylva Johannesson, nutritionist and account manager at the Sustainable Restaurant Association.

Clark says that while government praises the good (or better than average) practices of companies, it is afraid to do the reverse. While food taxes are “scary beasts” for a government, he says that modelling and data suggest a sugary drinks duty at 20p per litre would have a positive effect: reducing consumption of and leading to health benefits and cost savings to the NHS.

However, the sugar industry is hugely powerful, says Johannesson, citing the failed proposal to reduce the size of soft drinks in New York.

Jamie Oliver is taking matters into his own hands and introducing a10p charge to sugary drinks sold in his chain of restaurants.

7. Be cautious about new technology

While Google can confuse things, technology can also capture our preferences and health and nutrition priorities and tailor products for us. It’s this level of personalisation that Ellie Freeman, head of products at Graze, thinks is valuable.

Andrew Mullins, coordinator at Origin Green, also points to innovations in kitchen appliances like the air fryer which uses just a fraction of the oil used in traditional deep-fat fryers. 

However, Johannesson warns that technology also enables manufacturers to easily reformulate products to fit into various health and nutrition claims, which may be more beneficial for marketing than for consumer health. As Clark adds, using new natural sweeteners simply allows companies to keep selling us ever sweeter products, rather than gradually changing our palate

8. Stop shirking responsibility

Ultimately short-term thinking, the fear of not hitting quarterly targets, a lack of incentives from government, a lack of support from investors, and a lack of true cost accounting has created this health crisis, says Crossley.

“There’s a ‘pass the buck’ mentality amongst business, government and individuals – and we need to break that cycle.”