Info centre

Dairy

We launched 1% fat milk in April 2008, and since then we have sold 64.3 million litres. Following this success of our own brand 1% fat milk, we have now introduced a branded organic version and a UHT version and together with our own 1% fat milk we estimate that we've helped our customers reduce their saturated fat consumption by over 140 tonnes*. We have worked over the past year to reformulate existing dairy products and introduce new, healthier ones:

  1. In September 2009 we introduced fat percentage labelling on the front of our own brand yogurt helping customers make informed choices.
  2. Starting January 2010, we re-launched a range of 20 cheese products, all of which have between 30% and 50% less fat than standard versions.
  3. Since March 2010 our flavoured milk has been made from semi-skimmed milk, not whole milk.
  4. In June 2010, to help our customers manage portion sizes, we introduced portion markings on cream cartons.

*Based on 12 months, sales of 1% fat milk, assuming all these customers transferred from semi-skimmed milk

Be Good To Yourself

We re-launched our 'Be Good to Yourself' range in January 2010 and have now introduced 60 new and improved lines. The main focus was to make sure that our products tasted even better than they did before, even products like cheese, houmous and coleslaw, which are traditionally high in fat. We now have 250 lines in the range, from classic favourites such as chicken arrabbiata and sticky toffee pudding, to newer dishes like Singapore noodles all of them either less than 3% fat or with 30% less fat than a standard version. Within the range, 67% of products are low in saturated fat. It’s proving extremely popular already, with our market share up to 27.3%

Little ones product range

Our Little Ones baby and toddler club was launched in October 2009 and aims to provide parents of children up to four years old with targeted, nutritional advice and recipes through direct mail and a fully interactive website. All of the 180+ recipes are approved by the British Nutrition Foundation and our online experts like Dr Dawn Harper and nutritionist Sara Stanner (BNF) are available online to give the 300,000 registered users comprehensive health and nutrition advice for children.

“Pregnancy, infancy and early childhood are vital times for getting a healthy varied diet. Mums and mums-to-be therefore need accurate, reliable and practical information regarding the best balance of foods and drinks to choose for themselves and for their children in order to support their health, development and general well-being.”

British Nutrition Foundation

Sainsbury’s Cafés

We are always looking to improve the healthiness of our café menu and provide more nutritional information. For instance, we have taken part in the Food Standards Agency’s calorie labelling trial in some of our stores to give customers full nutrition and recipe breakdowns for everything our cafés sell. We have also signed up to the Food Standards Agency’s Healthy Catering Commitments, making a number of commitments to improve the nutritional make up of our products. For example, we have now converted the cooking oil we use in the café to sunflower oil, which reduces the saturated fat in every product cooked in oil in-store. As a result we have reduced the saturated fat of these meals by an estimated 5 tonnes.

Five-a-day

We know it can be difficult to fit the recommended amount of fresh fruit and vegetables into a busy lifestyle, and the current economic downturn is not making that any easier. We try to help by:

  • Running frequent fruit and vegetable promotions on everyday items, as well as seasonal produce
  • Promoting 'mix and match' price offers
  • Locating our fruit and vegetables at the front of our stores, making them easy for customers to find
  • Making sure that over 25% of the 69 million Tip card recipes we printed over the past 12 months had at least one portion of Five-a-day fruit or vegetables
  • Using a special Five-a-day logo to help our customers identify products containing fruit and vegetables

Our overriding commitment is to help make it easier and more affordable for all our customers to get their Five-a-day. A recent survey showed that the average amount of fruit and vegetables eaten dropped to only 2.6 a day between 2008 and 2009*, the comparable figure for Sainsbury's customers has risen over the past four years to 2.84 a day. An example of where our values make us different.

*5-a-day purchasing survey by Kantar Worldpanel, April, 2010.