Somerfield is to focus more clearly on its fresh offer after realising that even its own staff were confused by the wide range of conflicting healthy eating messages in store.
Innovation director Sandra Ziles told the South West Food & Drink Conference "If it's confusing for us, then we can only imagine how confusing it must be for our customers who do not have the inside knowledge that we have."
Somerfield is keen to place additional emphasis on its fresh foods as part of its key product offer. It was the first retailer to introduce the 5-a-day concept into its stores, in 1991, said Ziles, and rebadged its initiative in 2003. The chain has introduced 5-a-day into its fresh produce aisles and at all relevant points in its stores. "There is a huge opportunity to do more with 5-a-day with the fresh and ready meal offer and we consistently design fruit and vegetables, in 80g portions, into our recipes to give a clear message to customers and promote a healthy diet. We always state the 5-a-day content in each recipe and recognise that there are plenty of opportunities to promote healthy eating across the piece," she said.
"We should all aim to have a healthy alternative for our shoppers. There are examples over the years of the healthy alternative becoming the only alternative, as consumers buy into the range. We are constantly monitoring how things are accepted by the consumer and where we need to do more in-store and through our magazines or NPD department.
"We are fully supportive of government health guidelines and working towards any aims or targets they have. But we do believe that it cannot be then sole responsibility of the food producers alone to sort out the health of the nation. There has to be a two-pronged approach, we have to get people exercising more."
Ziles was critical of government plans to introduce a traffic light labelling system tom illustrate the healthiness or otherwise of foods. "The traffic light system has the potential to be extremely confusing for the consumer, moreso if every retailer does its own thing. Somerfield is waiting for the Food Standards Agency to give its recommendations before doing anything.
"I personally think that labelling foods as red could create a gung-ho section of society that says 'let's eat all red food'. Mixed messages from the food industry will lead to people becoming blasé about every message they see."
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