Prof Paul Dobson led a three-year project that focused on consumer behaviour towards food and its impact on overeating and food waste. The study examined the role of food retailers and whether the pricing techniques they use contribute to the excessive consumption of unhealthy food that causes obesity and overbuying, for example through multi-buy offers such as ‘buy one get one free’ (BOGOF), ‘three for the price of two’, and price discounts.
It follows a number of initiatives announced last week by supermarkets as part of the Department of Health’s Public Health Responsibility Deal, an on-going scheme to get the food industry involved in promoting healthy eating. Examples included improving accessibility to fruit and vegetables and replacing confectionery at till displays with more nutritious foods.
Special offers are worth more than £50bn in sales to supermarkets and account for over a third of all consumer spending. The research analysed supermarket price promotions and whether these are biased in favour of food products high in fat, sugar and/or salt.
The researchers found a bias towards sugary products for price promotions and that straight price discounts are on average more skewed towards unhealthy products. Highly prominent deals, in particular BOGOF offers, tend to be distinctly skewed towards unhealthy ‘red traffic light’ products high in fat, sugar and salt.
Special offers with appealing high discounts tended to be slanted towards more unhealthy products, especially those with high sugar content. However, multi-buys were on average more biased towards healthier items.
Over the year Tesco had the highest recorded percentage of items on promotion with 28%, followed by Asda (24), Sainsbury’s (19) and Ocado (10).
Source: UEA
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