Cooking & EatingSupermarkets are doing too little to encourage healthy eating, despite the agreements they made about this in the National Prevention Agreement in 2018. It is precisely the unhealthy products that still predominate.
What we buy depends to a large extent on what we find in the supermarket. According to consumer psychologist Patrick Wessels, the supply is one of the biggest influencers when it comes to our choice of healthy or unhealthy food.
“What is available: is sold, gets attention and is considered normal on average – in that order. Supermarkets therefore have the decisive influence to promote healthier (or unhealthier) food.”
That is a great responsibility, says Wessels. ,,Shopping is cognitively intensive: consciously thinking about the groceries takes a lot of extra mental capacity after a busy day. Mental resilience works like a muscle, so it can become exhausted.”
“After hundreds of decisions during the day, it is not easy to think very consciously about purchases, for example in the supermarket,” says Wessels. “The average brain likes to take the path of least resistance.”
Putting healthy food more in the foreground can make the difference, according to Wessels. Still, the offer does not look good, according to the authors of the Superlist. That’s a list, based on research by the Questionmark Foundation. It shows what Ekoplaza, Lidl, Dirk, Aldi, Jumbo, Coop, Albert Heijn and Plus are doing to encourage consumers to buy healthy food and drinks.
What seems? Unhealthy variants are still in the majority, according to the study. This applies to product groups whose products may fall within or outside the Wheel of Five.
Which supermarkets do promote healthy eating?
Apart from the free fruit for children at Jumbo and the warning for relatively unhealthy products on the shelves at Dirk, the shop design in supermarkets is not aimed at a healthy diet. In addition, an average of four out of five offers in the brochures fall outside the Wheel of Five. The supermarket is not yet a healthy food environment, concludes Questionmark.
There is no progress: the outcome is not much different than two years ago, according to Questionmark. Only Ekoplaza and Lidl made substantial improvements.
Fair is fair: some supermarkets do better. Lidl and Ekoplaza, the leaders of the Superlist, tell this site to be proud of their efforts. Lidl is the only chain that has formulated clear objectives based on the National Prevention Agreement, with which the government tries to reduce unhealthy behaviour. Here you can see what that agreement means.
Lidl is also the only one with concrete objectives when it comes to selling products with added sugar, salt and saturated fat. Ekoplaza is the only supermarket to offer considerably more Schijf van Vijf products in its brochures.
Enforce measures for healthier groceries through legislation
“The investigation shows that too little is happening. While half of the adults and one in six children in the Netherlands are overweight,” says Diena Halbertsma, chair of the Alliance for Nutrition for the Healthy Generation. “Moreover, 70 percent of what we eat every day comes from the supermarket. Supermarkets therefore have a major influence on our shopping choices.”
According to Halbertsma, the agreements are clearly laid down in the National Prevention Agreement. “Supermarkets should therefore be very aware of the importance of this, otherwise they would not have made these agreements.” It is high time that the government enforces measures through legislation, Halbertsma believes.
Almost all supermarkets indicate that they do more for health than is claimed in the Super List.
Albert Heijn mentions, among other things, the Mijn Leefstijlcoach app, healthy Allerhande recipes and Nutri-Score A/B at the checkout.
Plus says that it is currently mainly focusing on applying the Nutri-Score food choice logo to its own brands.
Jumbo says to support the objectives of the Prevention Agreement and to encourage a varied and healthy eating pattern, for example by applying the guidelines of the Wheel of Five and Nutri-Score.
Dirk aims to make healthy food affordable and accessible with low prices. The supermarket was also the initiator of the petition regarding the VAT reduction on fruit and vegetables, and the supermarket provides information at the shelf.
Aldi is pleased that the steps that the supermarket has taken in terms of assortment and product improvement have been noticed. However, the discounter also states that not all efforts on the theme of health have come to the fore. Coop has not responded.
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