Supermarkets to discount healthy foods
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Asda, Co-operative Food and Aldi are to offer customers discounts on healthy foods, one of several schemes unveiled by the government to persuade people to eat healthier meals.
The supermarkets will fund price cuts on items such as fruit and vegetables and low fat yoghurt as part of an expanded new year push for its Change4Life initiative that aims to tap into parents’ resolutions for themselves and their kids to eat healthier in the new year.
Change4Life branding will appear throughout stores alongside information on how the discounted items can be used to make cheap, nutritious meals, dubbed “Supermeals”.
Four million recipe cards with healthy meal ideas will be distributed through channels including newspapers and a direct mail campaign.
A cookbook endorsed by celebrity chef Ainsley Harriet will contain recipes that can be made for under £5. Fifty thousand copies of the book will be available free through Change4Life media partner Daily Mirror from 20 January, while the same amount will be available to people already signed up to receive Change4life information.
It is the latest activity to draft in the private sector to help pay for and promote the government’s anti-obesity drive following 2010’s “Great Swapathon”, which saw companies including Unilever and Birds Eye fund discounts on their lower fat products in only Asda stores.
Public health minister Anne Milton says: “The New Year is a good time to think about losing weight. The Supermeals campaign will give us all some great ideas for balanced meals on a budget.”
Shadow public health minister Diane Abbott, however, says: “They’re calling this public health but it’s just a glorified advertisement for big business. This is a government that doesn’t take its responsibility around public health seriously.”
Readers' comments (4)
vasanti | Tue, 3 Jan 2012 10:21 am
this is a great idea and i am very happy that fruit and vegetables plus low fat yougurts will be discounted. great for lunch for people at work
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Graham Allaway | Tue, 3 Jan 2012 10:38 am
It is so blatantly obvious, especially in these cash strapped times, that there needs to be cost incentives to encourage people to eat more healthily. Low income families, who to a great extent live hand to mouth, will buy what's cheapest, if that's fatty unhealthy foods then that's what they will buy. Make healthy cheap and people will respond.
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Dawn | Tue, 3 Jan 2012 3:15 pm
about time! as a family of 4 (1 parent working and me studying) we struggle to afford fresh fruit AND fresh vegetables. The way in which Supermarkets cashed in on the recession 3 years ago was shameful and it lead to many family's like ours settling for the cheaper convenience meals, finally something is being done!!
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Azzam Sheikh | Wed, 4 Jan 2012 10:22 am
Absolutely about time they were reducing the price on healthy food and further contributing more to PR on these matters.
A step in the right direction is the Government backed campaign although there are mixed reports about this
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