The power of the supermarket

Article Het Parool: The power of the supermarket: text Hiske Versprille, Friday 27-9-2013

Supermarkets encourage overeating

Supermarkets encourage overeating. So say food scientists and health experts. Things are already happening against it, but it is not nearly enough. Time for improvement. 

Anyone who enters the supermarket after a long day's work, tired and a bit grumpy, along with a five-year-old, can literally feel it tugging at them. The glut of delicious, colourful, cheap produce demands iron self-discipline. Don't slack off, well quickly put a broccoli in the basket. Nice, a broccoli, that's a good start. What shall we make healthy with it later?

But first we have to go through the whole shop before we can checkout our healthy choice. Past the sweets, the biscuits, the fat cheeses, the peanuts on the left and the special beers on the right. And we may have a broccoli in our basket, but we are still tired and grumpy. The five-year-old spots the Spongebob biscuits and the Dora chocolate (he couldn't be more different-they're right at his eye level) and loudly announces that he'd much rather eat those than broccoli. Dozens of little choices have to be made, offers scanned-it's supermarket warfare again, after all-and in the end we just grab whatever seems most appealing.
At the checkout, the candy bars glisten and crackle towards us, the cupboard containing them so close it is almost difficult not to touch them. At the bottom is an offer of filled speculoos. Just say no to that.

A popular disease

We almost all struggle with it. Meanwhile, half of the Dutch are overweight, and obesity poses health risks, such as type 2 diabetes. People who get too fat as children often suffer permanently in adulthood.

Ralph Moorman - known in this newspaper as Hans van der Beeks coach in Hans halves - is a food technologist and health consultant. Moorman wrote a book on making choices when shopping and now wants to go to war against the supermarket "like a Robin Hood". "People act as if obesity is only the result of individual choices," he says, " but it is not that simple. It is a structural and societal problem, a popular disease

Obesogenic world

The world we live in has recently been described as 'obese'. That means the environment encourages overeating and too little exercise. Moorman: "Four million Dutch people a day visit the supermarket. Supermarkets, as part of our fattening environment, are so important that without their cooperation, the government's fight against obesity will be in vain."

Moorman is not alone in trying to get supermarkets to change. The Consumers' Association issued reports in 2006 and 2008 on what supermarkets are doing to make healthy choices easier. Most scored moderately there, except Albert Heijn. It looked at the space set aside for healthy products, the number of their offers and the presence of unhealthy products at the checkout. It also checked how supermarkets speculate on the 'nagging power' of children by hanging sweets, especially children's sweets, at children's height.

Healthy Weight Covenant

Things did change from 2008. In 2009, CBL, the branch organisation of supermarkets, signed the Healthy Weight Covenant. Since then, portion sizes of calories, sugars and fats have been delivered. Supermarkets and the industry are also striving to reduce salt and saturated fat in food.
Henrieke Crielaard of the CBL: "We have made industry-wide improvements in collaboration with the industry, for example on the salt content in meats and canned and jarred vegetables."

Also on more products is the Tick mark, the label that indicates on items whether something is a healthy staple or, in its kind, the 'healthier' or least unhealthy choice. Albert Heijn has almost stopped selling sweets at the checkout.

Healthy diet relatively more expensive

Meanwhile, a healthy diet is relatively more expensive than an unhealthier diet. So in terms of price, the healthy choice is by no means always the attractive choice.

Ingrid Steenhuis, associate professor of health sciences at the VU, conducted a major study last year on the influence of price on consumers' buying behaviour, including using a virtual supermarket. This showed that (in both the virtual and 'real' supermarket) making fruit and vegetables cheaper clearly encouraged especially groups with a low socio-economic status to buy more healthy food, without the money saved going to unhealthy things rich in fat and sugar.

Steenhuis will soon start a follow-up study into the impact of extra taxes on unhealthy products. Steenhuis: "Supermarkets can do a lot more to change the behaviour of their customers, just by the space they give items in the shop and on the shelves.

Supermarkets can do much more

At the 'head' of the aisles, very popular spots in the shop, you usually see unhealthy, processed products. Processed, high-fat and high-sugar products are on sale more often than healthy ones. Portion sizes should also be looked at more closely: they have increased a lot in recent years. You see this with bags of chips or pre-cut cheese: the slices are much bigger than a few years ago, and there are even more in a packet."

Jaap Seidell, a university professor at the VU and co-developer of the tick, also believes there is still much to be done. "Supermarkets are terribly important in improving consumers' diets. People often point at the industry-the Nestlés, the Coca Colas-but supermarkets determine more than anyone else what the range is, what it costs, and what goes on sale. They are hugely powerful."

Moorman: "Supermarkets need to do much more to encourage their customers to eat better and less. They should offer less factory-made food which contain a lot of sugar, fat, salt and/or flavour enhancers and little 'real' nutritional value."

Seidell: "I really hope supermarkets will make moves. You already see companies change if consumers want it badly enough; just look at the plump chicken. With healthy food, hopefully something similar will start to happen."

Consumer decides in supermarket

Everyone is so used to the supermarket layout that it seems like it has always been this way. But a lot of research has been done on consumer buying behaviour. As much as eighty per cent of the decisions customers make are made in-store rather than, say, when making a list. This gives the supermarket room to entice consumers to purchase something they had not planned in advance.

The basic products that are bought the most, such as bread, meat, dairy, are in the far corners of the shop. So for daily shopping, you have to walk through the whole shop, past as many shelves and products as possible. The fact that the healthy, fresh products are usually at the entrance is no coincidence either: if customers are the first to throw something healthy in their basket, it gives a feeling that they are doing good, and they will be more likely to buy additional (and often unhealthy) products afterwards. The most expensive products are at eye level, children's products at child level - nobody wants a screaming toddler in the aisle, so parents are often persuaded.

People get a bit numb from so many choices and stimuli. It is therefore no coincidence that chocolate, crisps and chewing gum are often located near the checkout. In the food industry, the display sweet near the conveyor belt is therefore called an 'impulse cabinet'.

Shopping tips from Ralph Moorman

•  "Cook for yourself! Almost all unhealthy products in the supermarket are processed factory products. Fortunately, there is plenty of fresh food to eat healthy. Stay as close to nature with your food as possible, eat mainly what our ancestors ate in the time before manufacturers started interfering with our food."
•  "Be aware of the tricks. Salt, fat and sugars are often instruments in an orchestra of flavours and crunches, textures and colours specially put together to make you keep eating. No one eats sugar cubes or a whole bag of unroasted nuts, but with something like cocktail nuts, it is hugely tempting to eat through. People eat more from coloured M&Ms than from M&Ms in just one colour. If you know these tricks, you can take them into account."
• "Read the label! Ingredients are listed in order of decreasing quantity, so the former is most common. Manufacturers often use pseudonyms for unhealthy products: trans fat, for example, which is demonstrably bad for you, is often called 'hydrogenated vegetable oil'."
• "Don't be fooled! If it says 'no added sugars' on something, it is often a product that is already naturally full of sugar. A product 'with natural sugars' often contains fruit sugar from concentrated juice. These are no healthier.