'Game-changing' announcement that could revolutionise the food system

The government has announced all large food companies will soon be required to report on the healthiness of their food sales, Food Foundation Executive Director Anna Taylor examines what this could mean for the food system

Health Minister Wes Streeting yesterday announced all large food companies (retail, out of home, manufacturing etc) will be mandated to report on the healthiness of their food sales by the end of the current parliament term.

The Food Foundation has been working on this for four years – and it’s a real game changer! It's so great to see this leadership from government Ministers in both the Department of Health and Social care and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

We were first struck by the value of sales volume data in 2017 when we began our Peas Please initiative when we compared sales volume of veg in the major retailers with the Eatwell Guide.

Most companies were hovering around 7% of their sales volume being veg, but the Eatwell Guide recommended 20%. It gave us a north star, and monitoring sales volume was a good way to see if progress was being made.

In 2020-21 when I was working on the National Food Strategy with Henry Dimbleby we developed this concept further. Recommendation 12 was all about requiring companies to report on their sales volume – on a series of health and environmental metrics.

We’re hopeful that once the policy proposal in the announcement gets worked up in detail it will look very close to that recommendation – covering a small number of health and environment sales-volume metrics.

There was a small glimmer of hope that this idea would get over the line under the last government, but in the end it was moved from mandatory to voluntary footing and then frozen in the run up to, and following the General Election. And now it’s back on!

Much of the work we have been doing in the intervening period is building support for the idea amongst the business and investor communities – and kudos to those businesses that have already started reporting, and those investors who are part of the Investor Coalition on Food Policy who have been such active proponents of the policy idea.

Our latest State of the Nation's Food Industry report shows those who are reporting and those who aren’t yet and the government's policy announcement will bring standardisation – so we are comparing like with like, and will apply to all companies above a certain size so we have a level playing field and no company is at a disadvantage by reporting.

This simple act of transparency delivers the opportunity for systemic change - informing better policy design and triggering boardroom conversations.

The data will also clearly reveal to consumers which businesses are on their side and making healthy choices easy, and which are making it actively harder for them to eat well.

The government has also said that once reporting is in place they will move on to set mandatory targets.

The next steps will be taken forward as part of the new Food Strategy and with support from the Food Strategy Advisory Board. The sooner this is introduced, the better.