Supermarket majors in the UK are enjoying the sales boosts and marketing opportunities that come with the role of healthy eating educator. But is that such a bad thing? just-food.com’s Hugh Westbrook takes a look at the changing face of the retailers and finds a widespread acceptance of their new responsibilities.
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The rise of the supermarket has been well documented. From the small corner shops to vast emporia selling all manner of foodstuffs, we all rely on them. Their reach has also increased in recent years, as the larger supermarket branches start to fill their shelves with non-food items in a bid to compete with other high street retailers.
But recently supermarkets, particularly in the UK, have started to take on more than just a sales role. Where food is concerned, education is becoming increasingly important to the major groups, as they seek to tell us about the nutritional value of what we are eating. The extension of this is that the education is continuing beyond food, as the retailers seek to inform and educate us about all manner of health issues as well as provide us with medical advice and assistance.
Exploiting an interest?
It’s easy to be cynical about this development. After all, consumers are taking an ever-increasing interest in health issues; food stories are forever in the media and there is a welter of often contradictory information available for consumers to sift through.
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By GlobalDataWho better than the supermarkets to exploit this need? They can provide the information people require and then build marketing campaigns on the back of it, thereby increasing their sales and using a worried public to do it. Yet while those in the industry acknowledge that this is possible, the general consensus is that this is a development to be welcomed, and the commitment from supermarkets themselves comes across as being anything but cynical.
Positive help
In food terms, the change in emphasis can be observed very simply. In the past, healthy supermarket lines tended to be uniformly low fat, with the health aspect of the product simply being ‘weight loss’. Now, however, positive health messages are becoming more prevalent and more stress is being placed by nutritionists on the value of what you put into your diet rather than the benefits of what you take out. And the supermarkets have followed accordingly, with many products marketed for the benefits of what they introduce into the body.
In the UK, Tesco has emphasised how much this has developed with the Food Doctor range, produced in association with nutritionists Ian Marber and Vicki Edgson, who have both written extensively on food-related issues. The products, which include soups or yoghurts, are promoted via the positive health benefits that they bring.
Marber agreed that it is only recently that such products could have found a place on supermarket shelves. “Supermarkets are taking the initiative more because there is a growing interest in health issues. They are becoming proactive,” he told just-food.com. “We have an affinity with Tesco because they have an interest in healthy living.”
However, as with all other products, the public is not interested in making more healthy meal choices unless they satisfy their palate. “The products have to taste good,” Marber added. “The health message is secondary to that.”
All round advice
Tesco’s interest in healthy living is demonstrated by its website, which has a quite bewildering array of information about all aspects of health. No longer is it enough for a supermarket to tell its customers about how they should eat and why what they’re eating is good for them – supermarkets now also seem to have taken it upon themselves to tell us how to deal with a heart attack or inform us about the benefits of yoga.
All the major UK groups have extensive pages on their websites devoted to such issues, but this is only possible because supermarkets have become all-encompassing and because we trust them. The concept of the in-store pharmacy has also become commonplace, further enhancing the link between supermarkets and good health.
Nutritionist concern?
Is this a problem for nutritionists? Do they feel that in some ways the supermarkets are doing them out of a job? In fact, nutritionists are very positive about this development. Marber said that an increase in supermarket information has not resulted in a downturn in his personal business.
The British Nutrition Foundation is also happy with the development. Nutritionist Sarah Schenker told just-food.com: “We see it as a good thing because it provides information on what’s available and responds to consumers. Most groups employ dieticians with good qualifications, so the information is reliable.”
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The situation seems to be less developed in the US. While supermarkets do still provide information, government bodies such as the US Department of Agriculture are responsible for educating Americans about what they should eat. Spokesman John Webster told just-food.com: “We develop the dietetic guidelines for Americans and the food guide pyramid. We create all the information, pamphlets, website and so on and rely on information multipliers such as societies and charities to get the information out to the public.
Webster admitted that he was not sure where most Americans got their nutrition information: “The airwaves are loaded with nutrition information every day; we’re just a portion of it and we try to get our message out there.”
We all know there is regularly a bewildering amount of food stories flying around the airwaves. Scare stories are commonplace; health messages vary. People have long trusted supermarkets to sell them their everyday produce. That trust is now moving into a willingness to trust supermarkets to separate out the information that accompanies what they sell, and to tell them what they should eat, and how they should live. It certainly helps them in sales terms. But those in the industry also seem that think that there is nothing wrong with supermarkets taking on the role of educator as well.
By Hugh Westbrook, just-food.com correspondent
