Tesco reaffirms commitment to support healthy, affordable diets

We are baffled by the UK government’s further postponement of policy to ban multi-buy promotions on food high in fat, sugar and salt. 

This week, the UK government announced to push back policy implementation banning multi-buys on foods high in fat, sugar and salt by another two years to 2025. Using the arguments that the government wants to respect people’s free choice and the government wants to support companies in making food affordable for families.

Despite evidence showing that 1. multi-buy deals on products high in fat, sugar, salt contribute to overconsumption of unhealthy food - a direct cause of obesity, and 2.  multi-buys do NOT help consumers save money.

On a positive note, there are a few supermarkets that take responsibility themselves. Today Tesco confirms to “continue with its voluntary commitment not to sell HFSS products through volume-led promotions”. Removing these discounts is part of its strategy to enable customers to buy affordable, healthy and sustainable food. By removing multi-buys, customers can buy only what they need. 

And some other European supermarkets have also taken matters into their own hands and voluntarily removed multi-buy deals from their stores: Sainsbury’s was the first to implement this in the UK. Rema1000 took similar action in Norway and Denmark, and Dirk did so in the Netherlands.