Joining Forces to Tackle Obesity, 21-22 January 2002
Transcript : Preventing Obesity Through Dietary Strategies
Speakers
Wendy Wrigley
General Manager, Retail Brands, The Co-operative Group
DR WILLIAM DIETZ: Our next speaker is Wendy
Wrigley, who is General Manager of the Co-operative Group.
WENDY WRIGLEY: Well hello everybody. Amongst
the speakers that you’ll be hearing over these two days I am the
sole representative of the food industry, that’s a group of social
pariahs that Will Hutton would like to see the rest of you
excommunicate from the human race. So I guess my job today is to
look at what positive role the food industry might play and in
particular in tackling this national epidemic of ours. What I’m
going to do is address the six areas shown here, some of them in
more detail than others. I’m going to look at how we communicate
with consumers, particularly on packs and how we promote to them.
I’m going to look at the products that we sell and also at this
broader issue of social inclusion. Now that list is by no means
exhaustive but it does represent the subjects that we feel that
we’ve got something to contribute to the debate. And inevitably
what I’m going to say is going to be from a co-op perspective.
Because unlike other big businesses the co-op is not a PLC nor is
privately owned. It’s the largest consumer owned co-op in the world
with business interests ranging from finance to funerals, so cynics
amongst you might think we have a vested interest in accelerating
the epidemic rather than curtailing it, but I can assure you that
is not the case. We’re also a big farmer as well as being a
retailer. In retailing terms we’re very much into small community
stores, community supermarkets and convenience stores, not into out
of town superstores and a third of our stores are in striving
areas, so they’re an area of particular interest to us.
So serving consumer interests is actually part of our raison
d'être and it means on some things we do take a view that is
separate and distinct from other retailers or manufacturers because
the people to whom we answer have quite a different perspective.
They have a perspective very similar to the people here. However,
we are also a business and, as such, we do have to face precisely
the same commercial pressures that every other business does and we
have to look for commercial ways of solving them in a way that
tries to put consumers first and not industry or the city.
And that leads me to my first heading. This issue of making sure
that people can overcome the first hurdle that faces them if they
want to change their diet, which is basically knowing what to eat
and roughly in what amount. The principle of right to know is a
simple co-op principle based on the belief that people have a right
to know everything about what they buy. The good news which all
businesses are more than happy to tell you, but also the bad so
that they can make their own informed decisions. And that means
doing things, which superficially a business might see as a
commercial disaster because when customers know the truth well
they’re not going to buy your products in quite the same
quantities. Now that is perfectly true, they might not, that’s the
whole point of giving them the information. But even if they don’t
they are likely to buy something else, and whilst particularly
relevant to the co-op, but there’s absolutely no reason at all why
such a principle shouldn’t apply to all businesses.
Here’s an example of the sort of thing I mean; advice on the
frequent drinking of sugary drinks on fruit juice and soft drinks
and that sort of thing, which seem to generate considerable
antagonism from the sugar industry, despite the fact that this is
trying to encourage sensible consumption, not complete avoidance of
sugary drinks.
Nutrition information. Some people are surprised that believe it
or not, this is not a legal requirement to put nutrition
information on all products by law although in fairness most
retailers and manufacturers now do this. Oddly enough those who
don’t, tend to be those who are in the business of putting sugar
and fatty products on the market. But the problem is that even when
it’s there many people just don’t find it easy to use. And that’s
because by law we have to put those figures on per 100 gram which
is why many companies now are also giving them for serving, which
actually makes it more useful when you’re eating, but even so
figures are not easy to understand. People understand calories,
they have a measure for them, the others they don’t which is why we
introduced a scheme devised by the Coronary Prevention Group to
give each nutrient a very simple high, medium or low indicator,
words that people understand. And we also put three key bits of
information on the front of each and every pack: calories salt and
fat. So that people can select things and compare things easily
while shopping without having to peer at the back of the pack. No
one else does this; most of the people only do it if it’s good
news, if it’s low calorie, low fat or whatever. We think that’s
something that the industry could quite easily change to make life
easier for people.
Guideline daily amounts are also something, which we’ve used for
some time and other people are now doing. So there’s a lot of
nutrition information there that people are doing voluntarily. The
problem is it’s not consistent, which is why we believe that this
whole issue of changing the law so that nutrition information is
not just consistent across all brands, but also easy to understand
and access, is, in our view, one of the important issues for our
regulatory bodies to champion during the EU’s labelling review.
Now these issues and many more are enshrined in this report and
the code of labelling practice which approached the whole issue of
labelling from the consumer perspective, trying to interpret the
spirit not just the letter of law because it’s not designed to
protect consumers. And going much further than the law actually
requires. It was based on comprehensive consumer research and was
presented in deliberately provocative language summing up current
industry practice as the seventh deadly sin shown here. The
consumer research that we did entirely supported our view that many
people are basically pretty cynical about how big a proportion of
truth food companies are doling out. For example, they agreed
wholeheartedly that 90% fat free claims are actually pretty
misleading, that 10% of fat is actually rather a lot, and they also
felt that consistency in expressing things like fat claims on the
front of the pack, that they supported that heavily.
Another issue, it’s a dead simple one, is this whole thing of
legibility. And when it comes to legibility, believe it or not
there are guidelines produced by an industry body called the IGD,
which is supposed to prevent this sort of thing, small print on a
patterned background. The guidelines also spell out other
common-sense measures to help anybody who wants to read packs, read
them more easily, but especially make it easier for those of us
over 40 whose faculties are perhaps not quite as sharp as they once
were. But the problem is the guidelines are only voluntary again
and many companies just don’t follow them, which is why there are
so many nutrition panels around in small print in cases like
this.
Our responses to that campaign was salutary, generally speaking
it was welcomed by consumer organisations and pilloried by many in
the food industry who retreated behind this regulatory defence,
basically if the letter of the law says it’s okay, why should we do
anything different? Which is why it has been gratifying to know
that first MAF and now the Food Standards Agency embracing many of
those recommendations. The problem is unless they’re then embraced
in regulation they’re not going actually going to have very much
teeth.
Now moving on to the next of my subjects, which is that one of
promotion and advertising. And before talking this specifically, I
want to spend a few moments putting my comments into context. This
was another controversial report launched a couple of years ago
which looked at the whole food chain from a consumer’s point of
view. It identified their concerns and how quite clearly they do
not trust the food on their plate. It highlighted how science and
the law lag behind consumer opinion. There’s public opinion,
basically it wholeheartedly embraces the precautionary principles.
Again it uses a provocative language to grab attention, dubbing the
issues the seven food crimes and they ranged across a wide range of
food production issues, including these three and these. And the
one of relevance to today is, the one we dubbed Blackmail, which is
the insidious targeting of the public and children in particular by
big business putting huge marketing muscle behind products which
hardly constitute a healthy diet. As part of the food crimes
initiative we committed to conduct inquiries into all of these
issues and to identify three tiers of action, for the industry and
at government level. And all of these were based on consumer
perception of risk and the precautionary principle. And one of
those perceptions is that despite virtually everyone agreeing that
variety has improved no end over the last 20 years, a significant
minority think our diet is less healthy than it was just 20 years
ago. Now this was welcomed by consumer groups but understandably, I
suppose, again slagged off by the industry as a cynical PR exercise
to which I reply now, yes of course it was a PR initiative. We’re
trying to use it to explain how a consumer-owned organisation can
be relevant for the 21st Century. And it used
deliberately immoderate language to bring home the depth and
immediacy of the public disquiet. But that shouldn’t distract from
the fact that there is a real message here, it’s one on which we’ve
taken action and we believe the industry ignores at its peril if it
wants to avoid that social pariah status that Will Hutton talked
about earlier.
So this campaign, launched in 2000, is one where we believe the
food industry is currently defending the indefensible, this
exploitation of children. I want to share with you the results of
some of our research. We interviewed a representative sample of
adults and also children. First of all dealing with the adults.
Opinion was split as to whether children’s diet today is better or
worse. More people think that children’s diet is worse today than
think the diet overall is worse today, the figure I showed you a
couple of minutes ago. 38% think it’s worse, 38% think it’s better.
And when it comes to the methods of persuasion used to get children
to want things, there was widely held view amongst adults that free
toys and gifts were dead certs if you want to persuade them to buy
something. Using fashionable people definitely is a real lure,
whilst there were 33% of wishful thinkers who thought that
describing the healthiness of something might also work.
Associations with characters from Toy Story, that sort of thing
were also seen as a winner along with in-store displays. No great
news there, I guess. And interestingly when asked, and this is
parents still remember, what are the key ways in which your
children find out about new products, advertising was mentioned
first. The very first thing over half of the people we talked to
and it was mentioned at all by 77%. So they definitely see it as an
influencing factor. So it’s not surprising that most people
supported a ban on the advertising of fatty, sugary, salty foods
during children’s viewing hours with about half of the people we
asked supporting a ban on all advertising. So it tends to indicate
that it’s the balance that seems the problem rather than
advertising per se.
Now moving on to the children themselves. From the mouths of
babes we actually have it, that their immediate response to
advertising for these sorts of foods, is to ask their Mum or Dad to
buy it. Not surprising. Equally not surprising, I guess, to any
parents is that less than a fifth admit to giving up when the
answer from the parents is no. So this whole myth that it’s up to
parents to control what their children eat by being firm, well it’s
nonsense because children have strategies to get around it.
We also went on to commission some research and sustain the
Independent Alliance for Businesses and Farming. And that showed,
quite clearly, that food accounts for a much higher share of the
ads on children’s TV than it does on adult TV after nine o’clock
and that virtually all of that advertising, 90-odd percent, is for
sugary, fatty and salty foods. So they’re being bombarded by this
stuff, there is just no balance there whatsoever. We also consulted
a psychologist on how the ads are manipulating the emotions of
children who identified the four fundamental emotional needs of
children, or indeed of all of us. And he looked at how typical ads
appeal to these needs by using techniques such as mother love,
where a nurturing mother is seen giving the child a sugary, fatty
product whilst mentioning such terms as vitamins, or stimulating
children’s imaginations and eagerness to embrace fantasy worlds of
products that come alive or cartoon characters that endorse
products. Appealing to their desire for role models and their
tendency to hero worship by using sporting characters guzzling food
that his team’s trainer would like you to endorse, or using rapper
street culture to lend street-cred with words like ‘wicked’.
Now this may not be proof, but we do believe that it provides a
fairly strong body of evidence to suggest that whilst individual
ads may fulfil existing ITC guidelines, the cumulative effect of
bombarding children with advertising and promotions focused almost
exclusively on these products is doing precisely what the ITC codes
says it shouldn’t, which is undermining progress towards national
dietary improvement.
Now we think that would give the ITC a good ground on which to
review what they’re doing. It’s why we’ve taken action to introduce
our own code of practice including a ban on this sort of
advertising, we’ve said we won’t advertise these sorts of foods on
children’s TV and children’s press or adjacent to children’s pages
in newspapers. If we do advertise to children, we won’t include
these types of foods and if we advertise to adults for children say
back to school, we will apply a minimum one third healthy lines to
those ads. We apply similar rules to in-store demonstrations and
other in-store theatre and other activity of that sort as well as
having policy for how we promote and package children’s products.
So we no longer use cartoon characters on products that are
unhealthy but do seek to use them on healthier things, like fruit
aimed at children. And here’s an example of a before and after
because we did used to do this but we’ve changed and removed
cartoon characters from a lot of products so you can see still a
bright gold pack but no pester power characteristics.
And in setting that example we’re trying to influence the ITC.
Unfortunately the recent review indicates that no action has yet
been taken. In doing so we generated a lot of antagonism from food
manufacturers as well as support from the consumer lobby. We’re
also very pleased to note that the Food Standards Agency is
reviewing this whole area.
Now, moving on to the next issue, I’m going to touch very
briefly on this, and it’s to do with the provision of healthier
alternatives. And this is actually one area where I think the food
industry as a whole really does perform pretty well. There is a
wide choice of lines available that can make a key contribution.
But the problem is they do appeal of course mainly to the
converted. And there’s second problem that manufacturers and
retailers are not always as good as they might be in making clear
precisely what criteria they’re applying to make them healthier,
which is indeed another area where agreement on a standard approach
would be most helpful to everybody.
There is then the more vexed issue of the nutrient content of
standard manufactured products - ordinary standard products. Now
potentially if addressed across the marketplace this could have a
really worthwhile effect on the diet and therefore the health of
those people, who, for various reasons, don’t want or can’t opt for
the healthier alternatives. It’s for this reason that some
retailers - ourselves included - launched an initiative a few years
ago to try to reduce salt and fat in manufactured products. The
main points were there should be only small steps at a time, in
other words less than the 25% reduction you need to make a reduced
fat claim. And that’s important so as not to affect the taste,
which is one of the main reasons why people tend to reject
healthier alternatives. It needs to apply to standard products so
that you bring the benefit across the population and there have to
concerted industry action if it’s going to have any real effect
whatsoever.
We concentrated on salt first mainly because that is actually
the most difficult one for people to control themselves. And there
have been some successes, most notably on standard white bread
where the salt level was reduced by 10%. But I have to say that the
going is proving very, very slow for a number of different reasons,
partly due to a lack of commitment right through the food chain. So
it’s interesting to hear the Department of Health talk about how
they’re going to try and re-energise this throughout the food
business, but also to the very real difficulty of producing
products, which are acceptable in taste to most consumers. Now in
addition, many retailers also apply particular criteria to products
marketed at children. These are ours. Again consistency across the
board would almost certainly by quite helpful in this regard.
I can move off now on to the more general point to do with
equality of access to decent shops. Because when it comes to
retailing and its role in the community, you go into any retailer
these days and they will do their utmost to persuade you that their
heart is in the right place and that place is in the heart of the
community where they trade. Problem is, that not all communities
are served by decent shops. And of course the ones that aren’t tend
to be in socially deprived areas. And this issue of equality of
access to decent shops is also therefore a key barrier to improving
health inequalities as many people have touched upon. And there are
two levels on which retailers’ in general, and ourselves in
particular, can have an effect. Firstly conventional retailing and
secondly, a role in supporting community initiatives in areas where
we can’t, for whatever reason, trade. Many of you will be familiar
with this particular way in which market researchers earn their
crust by categorising people according to where they live, what
they do and so forth. A company called Acorn, it’s the way they
divide up the great British public from those who’ve never it so
good at the top of the pile who they call thrivers, to those who
find life a bit of a struggle called strivers. At the co-op we have
less than our fair share of thrivers, more than our fair share of
middle Britain and more than the national average of strivers. So
we’re committed to serving the people in our trading community who
are finding life a bit of a struggle.
And one of the practical ways of doing that is by making sure
that our capital investments are distributed fairly across the
stores in poorer neighbourhoods. They account for around a third of
our shops, they get around a third of our investment and when they
get investment at a refit they also get more space for fresh foods,
more space for produce. Which of course then has an effect, it
serves a social purpose but just as importantly it’s a core part of
our business strategy because we know that we can trade
successfully and get a good return out of those particular stores.
And that in turn can really then lift the local communities like
Netherfield here, where our store is right in the heart of the
suburb, not an out-of-town site.
However, there are others where the situation is borderline and
an investment decision might rest upon whether a planning
application for a big superstore development nearby is likely to
get approval. And planning applications can go on for years, or
indeed whether the local authority is perhaps willing to invest in
security devices like lighting or CCTV. All of these have an
influence and show how retailers have got to work hand in hand with
the local authorities.
We’ve also proved we can trade therefore quite successfully in
striving areas. For those areas where we can’t, where running a
conventional retail store is just not a viable proposition, we do
have support for community-based initiatives like community co-ops
with a package proposal to support them including a food discount
card. Another way of putting things back into the community was
with things like this partnership with Glasgow Health Board where
we funded for three years a community nutritionist working in a
pretty deprived area of Glasgow. And her aim was simply to promote
a healthier diet using our stores to do it in. Including things
like a Get Cooking, Get Shopping project aimed especially at
teenagers who don’t know how to bake a potato, let alone boil an
egg and similar schemes aimed at nursery children. Taking the risk
that their parents have in getting them to try new fruit and veg
because they simply can’t afford the risk so they go back to buying
the same old tried and tested things. Now the learning from all
these projects has been integrated into a website resource to help
self help ventures nationally all over the country.
And that really concludes the last of my six points. I could
have covered many other things, particularly like the investment by
ourselves, by others in the trade, in developing things like
produce. Some of the very positive things that are being done but I
hope what I have covered, serves to illustrate how we believe there
is a role to play by retailers in addressing this particular
problem. Thank you.
DR WILLIAM DIETZ: Susan and Tim, if you would
please join me up here on the dais. We now have time for about five
minutes of questions. Microphone here.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR: Salt is cheap and it makes
the food taste good. Fat is cheap, makes the taste also taste good.
Now I put it to panel that no manufacturer is going to give up a
substantial part of their profits by cutting salt and fats without
actually bringing legislation to do so.
DR WILLIAM DIETZ: I think the question is, what
are the incentives for a manufacturer to give up salt or fat when
in fact it enhances the product, is that fair?
WENDY WRIGLEY: I think one of the best ways is
what Will Hutton was talking about this morning, which is
effectively social excommunication because you’re quite right, it’s
one of the things that the retailers have found particular
difficulty in, in trying to effect some change in this area because
there is a fair degree of resistance amongst the food manufacturing
industry to actually doing anything about it. And of course
regulation does provide a great leveller. It’s like a level playing
field and manufacturers are extremely competitive and there is also
a fear about doing something that will lose yourself market share,
either because it does affect your price, as you say, or because
people don’t like the taste any more. So external pressures like
regulation, like enforceable codes of practice are invaluable. I
think I’m probably out of line with most of the people in the
industry in saying that but I would tend to support what you
say.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR: My question is really for
Professor Lang and it’s about your new model for public health
policy, I mean, you mention that it’s going to take a lot of effort
and we need to be moving forward on that. How do you see we do that
when there’s so many different pillars that need to be in place to
get this new structure sorted?
TIM LANG: That’s a good question. I think that
we’ve got the notion now that targeting individual factors doesn’t
work. I think professions are atomised, academics don’t talk to
each other. They’re beginning to. I think we’ve got to put together
all the bits of the jigsaw, both intellectually and
organisationally. I think pressure - the Minister’s come in so I’ll
say this. I said it earlier actually. I think we have to put
pressure on the politicians. The track record of change in food and
public health has been when there is mass demand for it, change
happens. And frankly the public health movement has not got its act
together. It’s pathetic. It’s pathetically organised, but is
beginning to get its act together. So I’m now very hopeful. We’ve
had an inappropriate model, it’s out of date, it’s now seen to be
out of date, the evidence is there - the links between the
environment and human health are just there. We’ve got to put
multi-disciplinary teams together to provide better evidence. The
report that we’re launching on Thursday, give me your card and I’ll
send it you, is an illustration of that, all these people have
never worked together. We’ve got transport experts, exercise
people, nutritionists, epidemiologists, food policy people, that
should happen routinely and it’s not. What we’ve got is a culture
that is specialising, government that is specialising. That’s
all.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR: Can I just add to that
though that whilst the priority in health terms is with hospitals,
doctors and nurses and waiting lists and waiting lists and more
waiting lists, you know, we’re not going to get very far because
that’s what the public perceive to be the real health issues. What
we’re talking about today is to do with preventing people from
being on waiting lists to go to hospitals, so can we have some more
core funding please to address obesity and then we might be able to
do something.
TIM LANG: Yeah, but the figures are on our
side. £10 billion a year for heart disease, I mean the government
set up the policy commission on the future of farming and food
because of a fairly pathetic £2.7 billion on Foot and Mouth
Disease. Now it wasn’t pathetic, it was very important and £4
billion on BSE. Heart disease costs £10 billion a year, every
single year and somehow the Treasury doesn’t make that connection.
It’s quite astonishing. We pay for it, we pay for cheap food but
then we’re paying as citizens, not consumers, as citizens, we’re
paying for the externalised cost. That’s why the National Audit
Office are doing this report and getting interested in this is so
important. We’ve got to do full cost accounting of food and public
health cause it doesn’t happen.
QUESTION FROM FLOOR: I totally agree, I totally
agree, but when we actually sit down and look at our financial
frameworks within, for instance, the Primary Care Trust and we find
that 85% of the money we’ve got is going into say hospital based
initiatives. I mean you’re right, but we somehow need to actually
swing back that pendulum if we’re going to address it in health
terms anyway. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just think, you know,
let’s have some funding please that is ring-fenced in some way so
we can target this particular issue alongside the kinds of bigger
--
TIM LANG: In a lot of these things change can
happen without any funding. It means picking up the frame,
developing organisations, joining organisations like UK Public
Health Association, which are linking, academics like Susan and me
working together, us barraging across the disciplines. What if that
doesn’t cost money? But I take your point.
DR WILLIAM DIETZ: I’d like to thank the panel.
Tea follows the next presentation, we’re not breaking now for tea
but I need to check some logistics, so I think following the
suggestion of the speaker in the afternoon yesterday, why don’t you
all stand and stretch and then we’ll come back when I get this
schedule straight.