Customer choice, health and nutrition

Progress 2007 cont...

Making healthy options more accessible

We make healthy options more accessible through pricing and promotions, product improvements and special product ranges.

Pricing and promotions

We are tackling the perception that healthy food can be more expensive, through pricing and promotions. In Poland, we supported our new Healthy Living range with promotions in March 2007 and February 2008, including a permanent price reduction on over 50 products. In the UK, we ran over 200 promotions on fresh produce, fish, whole foods and Healthy Living products.

Our target for 2007 was to have five half-price offers on fruit and vegetables every week in 500 UK stores - our 'fruit and veg pledge'. We ran an average 23 half-price offers per week in 742 stores. This contributed to a growth in sales of fruit and vegetables by 8%. This promotion also runs in Ireland.

Product improvements

We are improving the nutritional value of our products. All own-brand products in our US Fresh & Easy stores (1,600 lines) contain no artificial colours or flavours and no added trans fats. In Poland we are reformulating products to remove additives and preservatives.

In 2007, we improved the nutritional content of 900 products in the UK, reduced salt levels in over 200 and reduced the fat content in over 150. Analysis of Clubcard data illustrates the powerful combination of product reformulation and visible GDA labels, in ensuring our customers are able to access more healthy meals. Thanks to the application of these labels, fewer customers regularly purchase ready meals with more than 40% GDA of salt, saturates or fat than before the labels were introduced.²

Special product ranges

In 2007, we continued to expand our Healthy Living range, launching it in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In Ireland, we introduced over 400 healthy eating lines, both branded and Tesco own-label.

In the UK our research has shown that customers have different ideas of what health means to them and our Health brands and foods had to change.

To help our customers, whatever their outlook on health, we have therefore revised and relaunched our healthy ranges.

For example, dieters want low-fat, low-calorie meals without having to compromise on taste, so we launched our Light Choices range with over 250 products. All these meals meet strict criteria for sugar, saturates, salt and calories and are either 3% fat or have half the fat of a comparable product.

Our Healthy Living brand has been redesigned completely. We know that there are a large number of customers who want convenient solutions to help them get a controlled and balanced intake of total fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt. The updated range of 220 products includes wholefoods, wholegrains, fruit or vegetables and superfoods, with nutritional criteria for each category based on the Guideline Daily Amounts, so the products will be natural sources of desirable nutrients.

2	Source: Dunn Humby Frozen Ready Meal Analysis, 2006.