Helping everyone eat better

We want to encourage customers to make food choices that are both better for them, and better for the planet

Helping our customers to eat better

Fortunately, eating healthily, in line with The Eatwell Guide, can also help reduce environmental impacts too. And we can all play our part by making improvements one plate at a time

7 in 10 shoppers are thinking about or already have changed their diets for these reasons, and over half of our customers believe that plant-based diets have a positive impact on the body. However our customers are all on a journey and seek our help as they tell us that it can sometimes be confusing to know what is both a healthy and sustainable choice.

We want our customers to feel in control of both their health and also their impact on the planet, through small steps towards a significant change in eating behaviours without compromising on taste or enjoyability.

The food choices we make can have benefits for our health and the environment too

The food choices we make and the way in which we eat has led to food production being the single largest source of environmental change¹ ,².
Many of the risks we are seeing from global warming, to loss of biodiversity, pollution of waterways, deforestation and land degradation are associated with unsustainable production of food.
Coupled with this, the health burden associated with these choices can be rapidly rising rates of obesity leading to conditions such as diabetes and heart disease

And, by eating in line with the Eatwell Guide³, the UK’s dietary guidelines,we can also have important impacts on our health as well as our planet. This is especially important as today, according to UK government obesity statistics, 2 in 3 UK adults are either overweight or obese – so we really do need to work together to help one another eat that little bit better every day.

_{Source: Health survey for England 2019}

A way of eating that is better for you and the planet

Whilst scientists have increasingly understood the relationship between nutrients, and therefore our diets and our health, recent studies have evaluated The Eatwell Guide (our UK dietary guidelines for health) and found that shifting diets closer to this recommendation would also have benefits for the environment too. (The Carbon Trust)

The UK Government’s dietary recommendations are presented as an illustration (known as the ‘Eatwell guide'). It is made up of the five key food groups and the proportions the diet should be made up of these foods to meet nutritional recommendations.

Several reports, including Scheelbeek P et al (2020) and The Association of UK Dietitian’s ‘One Blue Dot’ have assessed UK diets in relation to both health and environmental factors.

Compared to typical diets today, eating in line with the UK’s dietary guidelines - The Eatwell Guide - have been shown to deliver:

Balancing our diets - a focus on protein

Understanding customer behaviour to drive change

Ways we are helping customers to make healthy and sustainable choices

Soup an easy way to help our health and planet

Fresh fish ideas

Tracking our progress to help everyone eat better

Last year we became the first retailer to begin disclosing our performance on healthy sales. Robust criteria for the classifications have been
developed by our nutrition team, with additional guidance from independent experts.

Assessment includes a consideration of the categories set out in the Eatwell Guide, and how a product fares against the front of pack Multiple Traffic Lights (MTLs) i.e. no red scores, reformulation targets set by Public Health England for sugar and salt, the portion size (where appropriate), and the ability to make positive nutrition claims.

The scheme allows us to track shifts in sales, and to assess the impacts of our health initiatives and promotions to support better choices.

Read more about our progress and how we define and track sales of healthier choices

We're all on a journey and learning more everyday

Our partnerships and collaborations

We work with many research and campaigning organisations. Our partnership with Livestock Environment and People (LEAP) supports environmental research projects with the University of Oxford. As part of one project, we were the first UK supermarket to trial selling meat-alternative products in meat aisles. Our LIDA partnership has enabled us to get a better understanding of customers baskets in relation to the Government's Eatwell Guide (for more information click here)

We continue to invest in research to make healthy and sustainable choices easier for customers and have partnered with the IGD and Consumer Goods Forum on their Healthy and Sustainable Diets research projects.

Our low prices on everyday essentials ensure cost
isn't a reason to not shop with us:

Range

We provide an accessible range of tasty, fresh, innovative food, whatever our customer's budget, from our owned brands, by Sainsbury's, Taste the Difference and Hubbards, to our fresh fruit and veg brands, Greengrocer and Imperfectly tasty.

Offers

We are committed to having great everyday prices across all our ranges, and we always have a wide range of offers across the store to help our customers get even better value for money.

Price Lock

Sainsbury's Price Lock ensures prices won't go up on selected everyday products across grocery, fresh and home and personal care for at least 8 weeks from the start of each Price Lock cycle (occasionally, the price will go down). Customers can trust that the price won't increase; shop after shop.

Aldi Price Match

We've Price Matched to Aldi on 200+ Sainsbury's own-label and branded products in our larger stores. We know customers trust our great quality food, and they can now get much of this at the same price as Aldi

Nectar

Since 2002, we've been part of the UK's biggest loyalty programme. How we reward loyalty matters to us, and in 2008 we bought Nectar. Customers can collect and spend points across hundreds of brands, like Sainsbury's and Argos – and how they spend these points is up to them, either getting money off their next shop or exchanging them for rewards from any of Nectar's partners.

Please find Price Lock terms and conditions

We know that eating better means different things to different people, at different moments. It can be about celebrating, and giving our customers that little lift with food inspiration. We know our customers are looking for something new, like in the summer and at Christmas. But it doesn't have to be a big occasion to eat better; we're here to give great tasting food ideas all year round.

• We're showcasing some of our most iconic products from our Taste the Difference range and we’ll be adding many new products
• We'll continue to introduce our customers to new and exciting brands such as Leon and Wasabi
• We're launching new ideas that will bring people together to cook and create great tasting meals
• We work hard to ensure that we're offering more of the products our ethnically diverse range of customers want to buy. We'll be launching more new ranges that meet the needs of our diverse communities by the end of the year