4,000 unhealthy food promotions per week
The Big Four UK supermarkets ran 48,600 food promotions for approximately 11,700 distinct food products in total. Over 21,000 (43%) of these promotions were for less healthy (HFSS) products. Sainsbury's and Morrisons ran the most promotions for H FSS products in total: each approximately 5700 over five weeks, closely followed by Asda and Tesco with each about 5000 promotions.
Price promotions
On average in a given week in the research period, between 20-30% of the products in the food product range of the four supermarkets were on promotion. Over 43% of those promotions appeared to promote HFSS products. Although for a number of products the available data did not allow classification, the general picture emerging is clear (see figure below). The total number of promotions is in the same order of magnitude for all major supermarkets. Additionally the roughly even distribution of promotions over HFSS and healthier products is consistent for all of the four supermarkets.
More reading
- You can find the full report here.
- You can read the press release here.
