They, along with KP Snacks, Nomad Foods and Premier Foods, have stepped up to introduce healthy food and drink sales reporting in the UK from next year.
This is ahead of the UK Government plans for a mandatory system, which would make the UK the first country in the world to introduce mandatory healthy food sales reporting across the food and beverage sector.
They have pledged to use the current Nutrient Profiling Model, which is used for existing High Fat, Sugar and Salt restrictions. The Government has consulted on updating the model and broadening the scope but using this would delay reporting, they said.
Healthier Food Targets and Reporting forms part of the UK Government’s approach to improving population health through prevention.
The soft drinks industry has already faced a clampdown by the UK Government.
The Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) was introduced in 2018 to target the amount of sugar in soft drinks though a tax system. The UK Government recently announced plans to extend this to milk based drinks and drop the reduce the levy level from 5g per 100ml to 4.5g per 100ml.
Soft drinks taxes are also used in other countries across the globe. Recently, in Germany, over 300 drinks companies, signed a letter opposing plans for a sugar tax on soft drinks.
This latest letter to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the five UK food and drink businesses pledged to publish healthy food sales data and called on government to work with industry to implement a mandatory reporting system for all food and drink businesses.
The food and drink manufacturers, along with trade association The Food and Drink Federation (FDF), highlighted the positive moves already made by the industry.
The FDF said that its members’ products now contain 19% less sugar, 18% less salt and 17% fewer calories than they did five years ago.
The letter said: “We believe that the introduction of mandatory healthy food sales reporting for all large food and drink businesses is critical to support this progress. It will provide consistent data and evidence to inform future policymaking, as well as an incentive to encourage continued investment in healthier food and drink across industry.”
Richard Hall, Vice President General Secretary, Danone North Europe, said: “At Danone, we believe transparency is one of the best ways to drive progress on health and have long chosen to go beyond mandatory health and nutrition reporting requirements.
Hall added: “We welcome this group, which will play an important role in driving greater transparency and consistency in the wider food system. The more we collectively measure and share, the easier it is to see what’s working, where barriers remain and the opportunities to accelerate progress towards better health outcomes.”
Karen Betts, Chief Executive at The FDF, said that the data and transparency that reporting will bring will incentivise companies to “double down on progress” and give the government a valuable tool to measure the impact of health policies.
“In this way, this group of early-movers can test the best ways to collate and report data to support our broader sector and government in informing any future legislation,” she said.
