• the majority of promotions such as two-for-one offers being for ready meals and junk food, and rarely for fresh fruit and vegetables

• snacks such as chocolate being offered at the checkout

• high salt content in own-brand foods

• misleading and complicated nutritional labelling and information and a lack of information about nutrition and healthy food choices

The National Consumer Council (now Consumer Focus) carried out a survey of different retailers in 2004 and a follow up survey in 2005 on their performance in offering healthy food. Tesco performed poorly, for example: 

• only one product contained less salt than in the previous year

• 1/3 of products didn’t translate ‘sodium’ into ‘salt on labelling

• no products contained Tesco’s new ‘signpost’ nutritional labelling

• 14% of promotions were for fruit and veg compared to 35% for fatty and sugary foods

• unhelpful information about nutrition was given by customer helpdesk

The Centre for Food Policy at City University studied the public announcements of the top 25 food companies in 2006 and found that the companies were not doing enough to tackle health problems. Of 28 criteria looked at, Tesco performed only on 14, with problems including no policy on children’s health, no board member responsible for health, and no commitments on sugar or fats. Read the City University report and press release 

The Food Commission campaigns for quality, healthy food to be more widely available, as a right for people to have access to. Read more about the Food Commission for information about food health, labelling, and the promotion of unhealthy food to children.