Now that can't be right can it, because they are just related?
Yes, my point was relating to the amount of shelf space, which is directly related to how many units are sold each week and the replenishment of shelf gaps twice a day. So to use your example if there is stock on shelf of wholemeal flour and it’s there when you come to buy it (pandemics aside) then it’s space allocation is right. If people buy more it will be given more space in the next range review. Equally if people bought less the shelf space would decrease. The food retailer doesn’t dictate what people choose to buy. They can however incentivise with price and promotions (for which there is additional space in store).
Aisles of soft drinks (with around 65% of the space being no sugar drinks) though represent what is sold.
so the point is, how do you shift what people put in their baskets which I think is the point we agree on ? The main drivers for this are price and promotion to encourage trial of something new and to encourage the shift permanently with repeat purchase. Well that is the main tool that Retailers have at their disposal. That and to develop new products in their own label portfolio. Problem with new products is the cost price of the food and the wastage on things that have a short life (particularly with the pressure on food waste). People have to buy it to make it work. And now that most consumers are spreading their shop in more than one place the basket size is dropping making new products less certain.
One option is not to stock the item. That might reduce income but we are interested in people's health, not Tesco's income.
The problem you have is that the food industry is a commercial supply chain with many suppliers and high retail competition (most shoppers shop at 2 or 3 different food retailers). Are you proposing that someone should decide what people are allowed to buy centrally and restrict sale of goods?
and what rule would you apply? On what basis is someone allowed to buy or sell something?
Suppliers make stuff, retailers sell it, consumers buy it or not...that’s the model here and everywhere else.
Given that the food industry is one of the biggest, if not the biggest manufacturing sector we have in this country, regulating supply as suggested seems a little unrealistic. How would that even work? Nationalise the whole food industry including all 7000 food manufacturers ? ...fine a retailer that sells too many cakes?
If Tesco decided not to list say a mr Kipling angel slice multipack for instance ...would the consumer just not buy it from Asda instead? Almost certainly ...so you would have to ban mr Kipling angel slices from sale everywhere. I’m sure premier foods would have something to say about that, particularly as it isn’t harmful if eaten responsibly. Sounds like it gets into the realms of competition law.
wouldn’t it be far easier to offer some sort of incentive for consumers to eat more healthily whilst raising awareness on healthier choices to improve balance and at the same time make healthier convenience foods cheaper? I don’t have a problem with shifting unhealthy foods to more expensive prices to reduce volume, but you need to ensure that the alternatives are affordable and as attractive, particularly the convenience options at the low end of affordability.
I don't really see that the price of nourishing food is the issue. Chicken, milk and eggs are good protein and cheap. Potatoes are cheap and so are carrots. Bananas are pretty cheap. I eat masses of bread and jam which seems to keep me perfectly healthy. Vast amounts are spent on alcohol. Food is surely much cheaper than it was in the fifties and sixties - all sorts of food.
I cannot get my head around the idea that people are eating too much because they cannot afford stuff. Surely if they ate a bit less of the bad stuff they could afford some of the good stuff? I can see why that is hard to handle, as Trish says, but I find it hard to see how pricing is the solution.
The problem is people are also time poor. This is driven in part by household incomes shifting to dual income over the last few decades. Comparing a raw chicken breast to breaded chicken nuggets for example The nuggets win on both price (half the price of raw) and convenience. You can play that out for sausages and burgers too. It’s far cheaper to buy cake than make it at home too...because the manufacturer has economy of scale?
in terms of overall income, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to be eating less fresh food (including fruit in particular) and eating more of the low quality processed food. This is a factor of income (where proportionately you are spending more of your income on food ..around 40% at the lower end). The other factor is the higher cost generally of convenience food. Cooking to save money just isn’t an option for some. Some people also don’t have the cooking facilities if they are in temporary or shared accommodation etc. Even the more well off have to resort to convenience options. A large proportion of people are not confident cooks either regardless of income.
Why everyone eats less healthily comes down to choice (viable alternatives) and the price of convenience food.
A manufacturer can make healthier versions of things, introducing fibre for instance, however these are often a lot more expensive than the version before. So this is the nub of the issue. How to make healthier food that is the same price as the unhealthy version and if it is more expensive, how do you incentivise people to buy and try it?
encouraging people to cook at home from raw ingredients is not the answer to the wider problem. Many people decided to cook from scratch at home during lock down (mainly cake ironically) but many many more didn’t bake but ate big bars of dairy milk. Interestingly net alcohol consumption went down over lockdown. I doubt people will continue cooking from scratch once lockdown measures ease because they will become time poor again.
Embracing convenience foods as part of the solution rather than demonising them (as often happens in the press) seems to be a sensible route forward. Encouraging substitution as well may have legs, but that would require an expensive government comms campaign and some joined up thinking across defra and public health agencies.
I think to illustrate what a cul de sac the U.K. has got itself into you only have to look at the PHE sugar reduction targets. Anyone that knows anything about baking or chocolate-making knows it’s pretty difficult to remove sugar from those things let alone 20%. Doesn’t stop academics publishing papers showing variance in calories and nutrients across biscuit and cake types (that paper boiled down to a rich tea biscuit has less calories than a chocolate hob nob so everything can be reformulated to a rich tea biscuit). When challenged, a member of the Queen Mary’s academic ‘advisory group’ suggested manufacturers use fresh courgette in bakes to lower the sugar ...unbelievable (the moisture content would make that product impractical to distribute, probably quadruple the costs and make it potentially unsafe so that it would probably have to be chilled so it rapidly becomes a non -cake).
I think medical people should work more collaboratively with the food industry and perhaps we might make more progress.
