Examples of some of the approaches used by the food industry to reduce calories under the government’s Public Health Responsibility Deal Calorie Reduction Pledge.

Responsibility Deal

The government’s approach to working with industry is not to mandate action but to create voluntary agreements through the Responsibility Deal. The Public Health Responsibility Deal brings together the government, industry, the voluntary sector, non-governmental organisations and local government to voluntarily agree the actions they can take to help people make healthier choices. Organisations signing up to the Responsibility Deal commit to voluntarily improving public health through their responsibilities as employers, as well as through their commercial actions and their community activities and to reporting annually on the action they have taken in response to pledges they sign up to.

Collective pledges on alcohol, food, health at work and physical activity set out the specific actions that partners agree to take in support of the core commitments. The following collective pledges (with the most recent first) support the core commitment to encourage and enable people to adopt a healthier diet.

Pledges

• “Recognising that the Call to Action on Obesity in England set out the importance of action on obesity, and issued a challenge to the population to reduce its total calorie consumption by 5 billion calories (kcal) a day, we will support and enable our customers to eat and drink fewer calories through actions such as product/ menu reformulation, reviewing portion sizes, education and information, and actions to shift the marketing mix towards lower calorie options. We will monitor and report on our actions on an annual basis.”

• “We will provide calorie information for food and non-alcoholic drink for our customers in out of home settings from 1 September 2011 in accordance with the principles for calorie labelling agreed by the Responsibility Deal.”

• “We commit to the salt targets for the end of 2012 agreed by the Responsibility Deal, which collectively will deliver a further 15 per cent reduction on 2010 targets. For some products this will require acceptable technical solutions which we are working to achieve. These targets will give a total salt reduction of nearly 1g per person per day compared to 2007 levels in food. We recognise that achieving the public health goal of consuming no more than 6g of salt per person per day will necessitate action across the whole industry, Government, NGOs and individuals.”

• “We have already removed, or will remove, artificial trans-fats from our products by the end of 2011.”

The Department is currently developing a pledge on salt for catering, and fruit and vegetable consumption.

Annual feedback provided to the Department of Health shows Responsibility Deal partners are taking action on calories.

Big names such as Britvic, Burton’s Biscuits, Coca-Cola, Mars, Mondelēz, Nestlé, Premier Foods and Unilever, all of the major retailers as well as high street chains JD Wetherspoon and Subway included.

These are some of the actions already taken on reducing calories:

• Tesco: Reduced the number of calories sold in its own brand soft drinks by over 1 billion in 2012.

• Sainsbury’s: Reduced the sugar content of its own brand high juice squashes by between 4 and 10%, removing over 600 million calories from customers’ baskets per year; as well as removing 23 tonnes of saturated fat from the pastry in its biggest selling mince pies. 

• Coca-Cola: Sprite now contains 30% fewer calories.

• JD Wetherspoon: Reduced the calories in 12 dishes. 

• Nestlé: Over half (54%) of Nestlé confectionery now contain less than 110 calories per serving. 

• Mars: On way to reducing the calories in all its chocolate products to no more than 250 calories per portion (by end 2013); with further reductions in some leading products, including Twix (from 284 to 248 calories). Has also launched the Maltesers Teasers chocolate bar (186 calories per bar). 

• Burton’s Biscuits: Changes to the ingredients across all its brands will result in an estimated national reduction of 700,000 kcals per day for its customer in 2013. 

• Subway: In 2012, Subway spent around 65% of its promotional budget on healthier eating; and launched a new range of low fat flatbreads. 

• Morrisons: Launched a new healthier range, NuMe, which includes lower calorie options on an extended range of products.  

• Aramark and Beefeater are now offering meals of less than 500 calories 

• Britvic is to remove its full sugar Fuit Shoot from the market