Diet-related ill health is costing the NHS increasing amounts through illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, obesity and coronary heart disease. However, this is not just a question of personal choices, but of social circumstances, with low-income communities far more likely to suffer from diet-related illnesses, and an estimated four million people in the UK are unable to obtain access to a healthy diet.
Despite their mantra of providing affordable food, supermarkets play a large part in this problem. The development of superstores on outskirts of town centres and out-of-town sites, and the closure of many local independent shops as a result, has created ‘food deserts’ – areas where it is almost impossible to buy affordable healthy food, especially fresh fruit and vegetables, without private transport.
More recently, and encouraged by government initiatives, supermarket chains have begun to set up stores in deprived areas. But this is not necessarily good news:
The value offered by supermarkets offers much less to the lowest income groups. They offer best value for car-based bulk buying through offers such as ‘two for one.’ Not only are these special offers mainly for processed food, but lower income groups without access to private transport, and in particularly elderly and less mobile people, are less able to advantage of them. NCH the Children’s Charity found that travel costs to go food shopping added 23% to the shopping budget of low income families.
Supermarkets are best value for unhealthy and heavily processed foods. A study by the National Consumer Council released in December 2006 showed that some supermarkets were undermining efforts to tackle health inequality, and that many economy lines were high in salt, fat and sugar. In 2005, a National Consumer Council study showed that “retailers’ practices are contributing to, or exacerbating, the inequalities that exist between the diet and health of more affluent and less affluent customers.”
At the same time, research has shown that supermarkets are not always the cheapest sources of healthy food. A survey by Sustain in 2005 showed that a basket of fruit and veg at a supermarket in Walthamstow cost £2.50 more than the equivalent at a market. Research by the New Economics Foundation for the London Development Agency in 2006 showed that fresh produce in street markets was on average 30% cheaper than at supermarkets.
For further information about food poverty and supermarktes, please read about Sustain's Food Action Network and read the Food Action Network's submission to the 2006 Competition Commission Inquiry.
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