Customer choice, health and nutrition
Progress 2007
We are making good progress in helping customers choose healthier options and lifestyles.
Providing better health information
Customers want clear and simple information about how to live healthily. We provide this through nutrition labelling, our in-store pharmacies and on our website.
Nutrition labelling
Nutrition labelling helps customers make informed choices about the foods they eat as part of a healthy lifestyle.
We were the first to use the guideline daily amounts (GDA) concept developed by the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) on our labels, which is based on UK government-backed science.1
We chose this system because it helps people to plan healthy, balanced meals. GDA labelling has been adopted by over 50 manufacturers and retailers in the UK, and it appears on products in 25 of the 27 EU member states.
Some retailers in the UK use the traffic-light system, favoured by the UK Food Standards Agency. We believe that the traffic-light model produces inappropriate colours on some products, masks significant nutritional differences between products, and sends confusing signals through multiple colours on products. Nor is there convincing evidence that traffic lights are easier to use, or are used more effectively, than GDA labels. We continue to work with retailers, suppliers, governments and NGOs on the best way to communicate nutritional information to customers.
Nutrition labelling
In 2007, we continued our roll-out of front-of-pack nutrition labelling across the Group, including in Turkey, South Korea and Poland, where 33% of our products contain such labelling, and Ireland, where we now have over 5,000 labelled food items. We are committed to increasing rapidly the number of labelled products throughout the Group during 2008.
This builds on our achievement of being the first supermarket in the UK to introduce front-of-pack nutrition labelling, and we are still the only supermarket where all eligible products carry the labels - over 7,000 in total.
Health checks
Health checks are now available in our 230 in-store pharmacies in the UK, to help customers keep track of key health indicators. For £10, customers receive a 20-minute consultation and a personal Health Check Record Book containing their key health indicators and advice on maintaining and improving health. Our pharmacists check customers' weight management (including height, weight, body mass index and waist measurement), blood pressure, cholesterol levels and indicators for diabetes. Customers receive advice from the pharmacist on what the results mean, plus advice on simple diet, exercise or lifestyle changes to improve their health. They also receive a pedometer to help track exercise levels, two weeks' free membership of tescodiets.com and a day's free gym pass.
In-store pharmacies
Our pharmacies work closely with local Primary Care Trusts in the UK to provide services ranging from reviewing medicine use to stop smoking consultations. As our stores are often open outside doctors' surgery hours, this provides an alternative to visiting the doctor for 14 million of our customers each week.
We began to offer free screening for diabetes at all our UK in-store pharmacies in 2007. An estimated 750,000 people do not know they have diabetes, as they are unaware of the symptoms. Customers fill in a questionnaire at the pharmacy counter. If they answer 'yes' to any of the questions, the pharmacist will give them a free blood glucose test, explain the results and give advice on the next steps.
We communicate about health and nutrition with our employees as well as customers. In 2007, we produced monthly special issues of our internal newsletter One Team. These included advice from a Tesco nutritionist, simple steps for employees to take to improve their diet, and healthy recipes.
We piloted a new staff room in our Amersham store. Following a staff consultation, we added fruit cups, a salad bar and sandwiches to the staff menu. We also improved facilities to provide the freshly produced options such as juices and smoothies that our staff wanted. We are piloting the use of GDA labels on signage in the Amersham staff restaurant. We aim to introduce the improved menu to a further 190 stores in the next 12 months and to all UK stores over the next four years.
Online information
We are providing more information to customers through our website. In 2007, we launched a significantly updated healthy living website.
In November, we launched a Healthy Living Tracker on the site, to help people keep track of their diet and exercise habits. The Tracker calculates a person's allowance of different nutrients based on their weight, height, age and activity levels. It also considers the importance of each food type in a healthy, balanced diet. The Tracker then helps people to choose foods that will meet their allowance. We have had 35,000 people sign up for the tracker so far, demonstrating the demand for personalised information where the customer is in control.
Other services include tescodiets.com, the UK and Ireland's biggest online dieting and healthy eating service. Through it, we offer convenient weight loss advice tailored to suit individual lifestyles.
www.tesco.com/health
| 1 | Department of Health Report on Health and Social Subjects No 41. Dietary Reference Values for Food Energy and Nutrients for the United Kingdom. London, HMSO 1991. |
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