Asda has claimed a two-year trial to nudge shoppers towards healthier choices has shown retailer-led interventions are at least 10 times more effective than the government’s in-store promotions ban.
The supermarket announced a partnership with Nesta in September 2023 to trial a series of “high-potential health interventions” that could encourage shoppers towards more healthy baskets, based on the government’s own health score.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons’ Health and Social Care Committee inquiry into food and weight management, the supermarket said the results of the trial had shown it was far more effective than the government’s ban on promotions in high-profile locations and multibuys in store. The full results of the trial are due to be published in full at the end of the year
“We have had a two-year partnership with Nesta, where we have been looking at the healthiness of our sales and setting a sales-weighted health metric, as well as running trials to look at opportunities to shift to health baskets,” Beth Fowler, senior manager, healthy and sustainable choices at Asda, told the committee.
Fowler said that while a study published last year by the University of Leeds and Aberdeen’s Rowett Institute had showed the government’s promotion ban had led to a “very minimal” reduction in sales of healthy foods, Asda’s trials with Nesta had led to a shift in sales of up to 60%.
Last year, scientists studying sales data from over 840 stores in England, Scotland and Wales ound on average, the proportion of HFSS sales from the 13 categories covered by the legislation fell by 0.63 percentage points after the ban came into force in October 2022.
The reduction, they found, equated to two million fewer in-scope HFSS products being sold per day after the new law took effect.
However, Fowler told MPs that the promotions ban was “really complex and really costly” for supermarkets to implement, and that Asda’s trials had shown much bigger shifts, albeit on more limited trials so far.
“When we have worked together across retail to analyse that independently through Leeds University, there is a very minimal reduction in sales of less healthy food,” she said.
“The data and the reference point that I am looking at is that it is a 0.63% reduction – so, less than a 1% reduction – in sales of those less healthy products.
“When we have run trials – we are currently analysing the trials we have done with Nesta, and we will be publishing the results of those – we see more significant change when we implement health initiatives: 10%, 20% and even 60% in some of the initiatives we have done in driving healthier sales.”
However, Asda admitted not all its trials had worked.
An intervention aimed at encouraging shoppers to buy more fruit and veg by offering them free vouchers to spend on fresh produce resulted in “a very small proportion” of the vouchers being redeemed.
Fowler said the results “suggests to us that there are barriers outside price that might need to be addressed when it comes to key healthy categories such as fruit and veg.”
Asda and Nesta have been using the government’s nutrient profiling model to come up with sales-weighted averages for the results of its trials.
Last week, the government published a new model of the NPM, which has met a huge backlash from the food industry.
Fowler said Asda was calling on ministers to set targets for the food industry, which it could seek to hit using the different policies it had been trialing with the likes of Nesta.
“Our ask is for policy to be outcomes-based and to allow us to prescribe the routes to deliver change.”
Last July, The Grocer revealed health secretary Wes Streeting had announced the government was willing to repeal the ban on junk food promotions in supermarkets as part of his 10-year plan for the NHS and allow an era of “smarter regulation”.
In September, Streeting said supermarkets would be “set free to do what they think will work” in the fight against obesity.
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