The casualties are already mounting. PepsiCo invested £13m into its Coventry site to reformulate the entire Doritos portfolio, slashing salt and fat by 18% and 14% respectively after years of meticulous work. In September 2024, Mondelez declared its entire Belvita soft bakes range completely non-HFSS, having reduced sodium by up to 56%. Premier Foods cut sugar by more than 40% and saturates by 70% in its Mr Kipling Delicious & Light slices.
These reformulated products represent hundreds of millions of pounds in investment. Yet barely a week after the delayed HFSS advertising ban came into force, the government announced it will switch to an updated nutrient profiling model that will render all this effort worthless. These products will be banned from television advertising, online promotion and in-store location and multibuy deals. The government might sell this as policy refinement, but it is regulatory vandalism dressed up as public health intervention.
The impact assessment accompanying health secretary Wes Streeting’s 10-year NHS masterplan reveals the government’s intention to adopt the 2018 nutrient profiling model, which was shelved by the previous Conservative government precisely because of its enormous impact on the food industry. The new rules would bring thousands more products under advertising and promotion bans, including cereals, fruit juices, yoghurts and smoothies.
Even Innocent’s orange with bits pure juice, which provides vitamin C, folates and potassium and counts as one of a consumer’s 5 a day, would be caught in the net.
A mammoth task
Behind this dramatic escalation stands Nesta, the innovation foundation instrumental in helping the government draw up its mandatory reporting and targets framework. Nesta claims its plans could reduce obesity by nearly a quarter and save the NHS £20bn a year. These are precisely the kind of headline figures that appeal to politicians desperate to demonstrate they are tackling the NHS crisis without actually increasing funding.
But industry insiders say Nesta’s optimistic projections demonstrate profound naivety about how food retail actually works. Andrea Martinez-Inchausti, deputy director of food at the BRC, was blunt: “Those retailers that have already voluntarily begun reporting on the health of their products have found it to be an absolutely mammoth task.” She warned it would cost supermarkets “tens of millions” of pounds and take several years before adequate systems were in place.
While Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Asda currently produce annual reports on the healthiness of their sales, this voluntary exercise is far removed from the granular, product-by-product analysis that mandatory targets would require. In practice, this would require a fundamental reshaping of product ranges and consumer purchasing patterns, with verification and auditing systems that simply do not yet exist.
This brings us to a critical division the government seems determined to ignore. While the major supermarkets have cautiously supported the principle of mandatory reporting, food manufacturers are united in their opposition. The Food & Drink Federation’s chief scientific officer Kate Halliwell warned: “Businesses made their investments based on a clear, government-defined standard and have made significant progress.” FDF members’ products now contain a third less salt and sugar and a quarter fewer calories compared to 2015.
The Advertising Association was equally forthright, describing the proposed changes as “deeply frustrating” and pointing out that businesses have invested heavily in reformulating products and adapting campaigns over months, if not years. To change the rules now, when the advertising restrictions only came into force in January, leaves businesses in the lurch with insufficient time to prepare.
Undermining industry investment
What makes this particularly troubling is its timing. The government claims to prioritise growth yet proposes measures undermining British food manufacturing investment. Why would any company invest millions when the government simply moves the goalposts? The updated NPM model demands sugar reductions that industry experts say are “simply not achievable” without disastrous taste changes or investment many businesses cannot afford.
Government projections that the updated model could reduce calorie intake by 30 calories a day deserve scrutiny. They assume restrictions will fundamentally alter what people eat, rather than simply where they buy. They assume healthier alternatives will be available and acceptable. They assume businesses will keep investing despite regulatory uncertainty.
The out-of-home sector, which contributes a large proportion of daily calories for many consumers, has been given more time to develop data collection systems. Yet the government wants to impose targets on retailers immediately, creating a two-tier system that will distort competition and potentially drive consumers towards less regulated channels.
This intervention may actually undermine public health goals. By destroying the business case for reformulation, the government risks discouraging exactly the kind of incremental improvements that have delivered real results over the past decade. By imposing reporting requirements that will cost tens of millions of pounds, it diverts resources that could be spent on product development. And by focusing obsessively on reformulation and restriction, it ignores the broader determinants of obesity, from sedentary lifestyles to food poverty.
Moving goalposts
Wes Streeting has said he will ditch the promotions ban if businesses can find other ways of making baskets healthier. But this flexibility is meaningless when the underlying nutrient profiling model keeps shifting. What the food industry needs is regulatory stability, not intervention driven by activist organisations with limited understanding of commercial realities.
The casualties of these policies are not abstract statistics. They are the employees of PepsiCo’s Coventry site who worked for years to reformulate Doritos. They are the innovation teams at Mondelez and Premier Foods who delivered healthier products that consumers actually want to buy. They are the British consumers who will face reduced choice, higher prices and less innovation as businesses scale back their commitment to the UK market.
Before imposing mandatory targets and updating the model, the government should pause, consult properly and wait to see whether the restrictions that just came into force actually work. Moving the goalposts is not a public health strategy, and just creates regulatory chaos that will harm businesses, consumers and the health outcomes it claims to improve.
Craig Ralph is client services director at WeAreSPQR
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