Scotland takes a radical approach to obesity – with far-reaching implications

Four years ago this month, The Grocer broke the news that retailers and suppliers had marched out of talks with the Scottish government over plans for a draconian crackdown on the display and promotion of HFSS products.

Today the SNP government came back for a second helping. It has been fascinating to see the contrasting reaction of manufacturers and supermarket leaders, compared with that almighty bust-up.

Back then, the British Standards Institute had been asked to fast-track a voluntary supermarket crackdown on a host of products. The move would have seen promotion of HFSS foods at front of store banned, with some products, including cheese and sausages, banished to the top shelf so they were out of shoppers’ eyelines. Yes, really.

“In those days there were mad policies like a plan for every fifth Pringle in the packet to be red,” recalls one source. Instead of ‘once you pop you can’t stop’, it was to have been ‘pop any more and you will drop’.

There was less of the eye-popping talk from politicians and no hints of a storm-out today, with retailers and suppliers at pains to stress they would work with the Sottish government on its proposals. Sources were even praising the rounded approach of the obesity strategy compared with the UK government’s stick-thin attempt last year.

Yet what has been put forward is perhaps even more radical than 2013, not least because it is going to be regulation, not voluntary measures, that eventually emerge from the legal minefield to come.

Consultation it may be, but the government has already said it is “minded to act” on plans to ban promotions on HFSS food and drinks, including axing multibuys and restricting temporary price promotions on a raft of food and drinks.

Fierce resistance

In doing so, the Scottish government is pushing ahead with what Public Health England had called the most important weapon to tackle obesity, before that very weapon was unceremoniously dumped by Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt last summer. As well as envious eyes from PHE, Scottish ministers are bound to attract fierce resistance from supermarket bosses, who have warned there will never be a collective agreement on promotions and suppliers who now face having many of their key products branded as ‘junk’.

Scotland, of course, has already charted an independent path on health policy in supermarkets in the past in other areas. There are plenty of namechecks in the document for its restrictions on promotions in the booze aisle (not to mention MUP).

But just how its government decides what products are in the firing line in food raises huge questions. It has said it may use the existing nutrient profiling model; it may pick on one nutrient, such as sugar; or it may choose to go down the calories path. (So far at least, Scotland’s health bosses have been less obsessed than the rest of the UK with sugar, so it will be interesting to see if this continues.)

If it comes down to overall calories, or other ingredients such as fat, there could be some pretty uncomfortable times ahead for some of the nation’s most loved products. Where, for example, do products like haggis and lorne sausage fit in with whatever definition of health it ends up choosing?

In reality it goes much, much wider than that, with thousands of SKUs potentially in the firing line and supermarkets and other retailers losing control over the fundamental price promotional mechanic.

Major backlash

If, as suppliers warned today, the result ends up being higher prices across a raft of product categories, the Scottish government is risking a major backlash, especially among the poorest shoppers.

The language used in today’s consultation document may generally be less confrontational than some of the warlike stances of the past, but public health minister Aileen Campbell’s accusation that the industry had “not delivered sufficient commitment to action” will chime with many across the UK.

Perhaps another reason why industry bosses are not screaming from the rooftops just yet is that in those four years that have passed since the BSI plans bit the dust, supermarkets have increasingly moved away from tactics such multibuys anyway. In the age of everyday low pricing, a ban on bogofs does not carry quite the same threat.

Yet as it emerges which products are to fall foul of the new definitions of ‘unhealthy’, today’s announcements may have huge implications. And it might not just be in Scotland, either. No doubt PHE and other influential supporters of a crackdown on promotions south of the border will be paying very close attention too.