Making the healthier choice the easier choice

Making the healthier choice the easier choice

We’ve cut tonnes of sugar, salt and fat from our own-brand products while still maintaining their great taste.

Across our ranges – from breakfast cereals and doughnuts to milkshakes and yoghurt – customers can now make healthier choices at Sainsbury’s that still taste great.

Breakfast cereals

In November 2016, for example, we changed the recipe of 80 Sainsbury’s breakfast cereals – increasing the grain content while removing more than 452 tonnes of sugar, 18 tonnes of saturated fat and 11 tonnes of salt (based on the previous year’s sales volumes).

In fact, as a range, our own label cereal lines now meet both the average and maximum 2017 salt targets (100% are below the maximum). The average percentage sugar reduction across the range is 13%, exceeding the government’s targets of a 5% reduction by the end of 2017.

And as we do with all our reformulation work, we backed up our cereal recipe changes with consumer panel taste tests – making sure all our reformulated cereals taste as good as the previous product or the branded equivalent.

Café drinks

We’ve also moved from whole milk to semi-skimmed milk for more than 40 of our hot and cold drinks in all of our in-store cafes, including that used for hot chocolate, milkshakes and lattes.

These changes all reflect our commitment to make it easier for customers to shop healthily at Sainsbury’s. We want 42 per cent of our sales to be of healthier products by the end of 2016/17 – rising to 45 per cent by 2020.

Doughnuts and cookies

We’ve also adapted our in-store bakery doughnut and cookie recipes. In April 2016, we removed 75 tonnes of sugar, 204 tonnes of fat (70 tonnes saturated) and 9.5 tonnes of salt (again based on annual sales), from these lines.

That adds up to about 1.5 billion kilocalories a year being removed from our customers’ baskets.

We’ve also continued to cut sugar levels in our own-brand yogurts and yogurt drinks. In 2016/17, we removed 36 tonnes of sugar from our Taste the Difference range and other ‘by Sainsbury’s’ yogurts. This came a year after we had cut 37 tonnes of sugar from our own-brand Fab Fruity yogurts range.

1.5 billion kcals

removed from in-store doughnuts and cookies, based on consistent year-on-year sales.