Sainsbury’s is set to remove free crisps and biscuits from its staff rooms in a bid to support the government’s campaign against obesity in the UK.
Staff members will, instead, be offered items from a list of approved “light meal” options, including soups, porridge and bread.
These options are intended to replace the “largely unhealthy snacks” that colleagues had complained about, and which, some staff claimed, were vanishing before the end of their shifts.
The supermarket insists the changes will ensure a “more consistent range of free food” and give employees the chance to “make light meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner”.
“We are committed to ensuring that every colleague who needs it can have something to eat at work,” it added.
The new guidelines will apply across all Sainsbury’s outlets, Argos sites and distribution centres.
The move comes against the backdrop of the Labour government planning a wave of new measures to reduce levels of obesity.
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities estimates that more than a quarter of the English population is now obese. Rates of obesity have doubled since the 1990s, costing the NHS an estimated £11 billion a year, which is three times the annual budget for the ambulance services.
Health secretary Wes Streeting has warned that, unless the “rising tide of cost and demand” is curbed, the NHS “risks becoming unsustainable”.
Simon Roberts, Sainsbury’s chief executive and a member of the government’s Food Strategy Advisory Board, has welcomed Labour’s latest proposals to order supermarkets to shave up to 100 calories off the average shopping basket, a measure that, if unmet, could incur fines.
He has urged that such rules be applied “across the entirety of our food sector”.
Meanwhile, ministers are also plotting regulations for restaurants to monitor diners’ calorie intake and drive it down further.
