Alice English, Project Officer, The Food Foundation
The Food Foundation’s annual flagship State of the Nation’s Food Industry 2024 report reveals how major UK food businesses are performing on health and sustainability. With detailed analysis across key metrics, the report identifies industry leaders and laggards, offering a roadmap for businesses to drive meaningful change. This blog explores the report’s key findings and outlines what needs to happen next for a fairer, healthier, and more sustainable food system.
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
Our food system is unsustainable, unhealthy, and unfair.
Among the poorest fifth of the population, households with children would need to spend 70% of their disposable income on food just to afford the government’s recommended healthy diet,1 and diet, overweight and obesity, are now the biggest risk factor for preventable death and disability in the UK.1
Growing numbers of farmers and growers are struggling to make a living, with 61% of British farmers saying they are likely to give up their farm in the next 18 months.4
Emissions from the food sector account for a fifth (20%) of the UK’s domestic greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs), but emissions from food have fallen at only half the rate of emissions from the wider economy, meaning that the food sector is now holding back national progress towards net zero.3
The State of the Nation’s Food Industry report shines a light on major food businesses from the retail, manufacturing and Out of Home sectors operating within the UK. Acknowledging the important role these sectors play in shaping our food environments and eating habits, the report uses 11 metrics to assess which companies are leading the way, and importantly, what businesses should be doing to help fix our broken food system.
Drawing largely on our 2024 Plating Up Progress analysis, in addition to new research, the new report spotlights businesses from across all sectors which are demonstrating leadership and best practice on health and sustainability commitments, as well as highlighting those which are falling short.
Here we explore some of the key findings from the report, identify the leaders and laggards among the retailers and OOH businesses, and outline what businesses should be doing to improve.
KEY FINDINGS OF THE REPORT
STANDARDS
Just 7 of the 36 major UK food businesses benchmarked have moved to disclose data or set new targets for increasing sales of healthy and sustainable food since last year.
Less than a third of major UK food businesses have a healthy sales target or disclose data on the healthiness of their sales.
Restaurant chains and fast-food outlets are the least transparent sector by some way, having made no progress since last year.
While the majority of major UK food businesses have set targets for reaching net zero and reducing Scope 3 emissions, there is an intention-action gap, with 42% of businesses not transparently reporting on their progress and almost a fifth (17%) having seen their Scope 3 emissions increase rather than fall.
Global food giants Mondelez, Mars and Coca-Cola still have no clear explicit board-level accountability for nutrition.
Food industry representatives and their trade associations met with Defra ministers a total of 1,377 times between 2020 and 2023. This is over 40 times more meetings than those held between food NGOs and Defra ministers.
AVAILABILITY
Almost a third (30%) of major UK restaurant chains serve main meals where over half of the options are very high in salt.
The majority (58%) of main meals served by the UK’s major restaurant chains contain meat, although this has fallen since last year (62%).
APPEAL
Just 5 companies (Haribo, Mars, Mondelez, PepsiCo, Kellog’s) are responsible for over 80% of TV ads for snacks and confectionary aired before the watershed, despite all of them claiming not to advertise to children.
Almost 1 in 5 supermarket multibuy offers are on meat and dairy products, with half of these offers on processed meat (10.6% of all offers) despite the known health risks of consuming too much processed meat. Just 5% of deals are on fruit and veg.
AFFORDABILITY
Over 1.2 million people working in the UK’s food sector earn below the Real Living Wage. This means they are nearly three times more likely to be earning below the Real Living Wage than workers across the whole economy.
Retailer progress in ensuring healthy staples are available and affordable for low-income families is not happening at the pace or scale it needs to be.
None of the 20 UK high street restaurant chains surveyed make their healthier or plant-based kids meal deals the cheapest.
CONCLUSION
Our analysis has shown that while some companies are leading the way in championing responsible business practices, progress remains far too slow. The rate at which companies are setting sales-based targets, to boost sales of healthy and sustainable foods and drive the change we so urgently need to see, has slowed almost to a standstill. The casual dining and quick service restaurant sectors have made no progress since last year. It is notable that climate reporting is an area where companies are increasingly regulated and legally obliged to report on their emissions. The same approach ought to be adopted for health.
This year’s State of the the Nation’s Food report shows that we cannot continue to leave progress on healthy and sustainable sales to the market. This approach has categorically failed to shift the dial and food businesses are trapped in a system that rewards the status quo. The government now needs to bring in regulation that raises the standard for all businesses.
A key first step on the road to change would be consistent and transparent mandatory reporting of health and sustainability data by all large food businesses through the Food Data Transparency Partnership. Both businesses and government should look to ensure this basic building block of a better food system is put in place as an urgent first step.
While the window to act is narrowing, it is not yet too late to deliver a food system that works for the next generation – supporting people and planet as well as profit.
WHAT CAN BUSINESSES DO?
Set healthier and more sustainable sales-based targets and publicly disclose performance annually against these targets.
Join other progressive businesses who have been speaking publicly about the need for government to put in place the necessary frameworks and policies required to level the playing field, starting with publicly calling for mandatory reporting of health and sustainability sales data.
Retailers and food service operators should aim to increase their sales of fruit, veg, beans and plant proteins and reduce sales of meat and HFSS products. Advertising and promotional spend should be rebalanced to support this transition.
Out of Home and food service businesses should increase the ratio of plant-rich to meat-rich options on menus and reduce the amount of meat within meat-heavy dishes. Retailers and restaurants ought to encourage uptake of plant-based options by including these within meal deal offerings to widen the appeal of plant-based options.5
Retailers should offer lower prices on healthier and more sustainable options within meal deals to make them more financially appealing to customers. They should offer healthy children’s lunchbox meal deal items that are compliant with School Food standards and make up five lunches that can be bought at affordable price point, for example through a multibuy deal.
Read the full report and recommendations here.
References
- The Food Foundation. The Impossible Challenge: Affording Healthy Food for Low-Income Families with Children. 2024. Available at: https://foodfoundation.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-07/Affordability%20.pdf. Accessed 13.11.2024
- The Food Foundation. Eating Away at Productivity: The Toll of Diet-Related Ill Health. 2024. Available at: https://foodfoundation.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-09/Eating%20away%20at%20productivity.pdf. Accessed 13.11.2024
- National Food Strategy. National Food Strategy: The Plan. 2021. Available at: https://www.nationalfoodstrategy.org/. Accessed 13.11.2024
- Riverford. Farmers Against Farmwashing. 2024. Available at: https://stopfarmwashing.co.uk/. Accessed 13.11.2024
- World Resources Institute. The Food Service Playbook for Promoting Sustainable Food Choices. 2024. Available at: https://www.wri.org/research/food-service-playbook-promoting-sustainable-food-choices. Accessed 13.11.2024
