A new healthy food standard will require food businesses including supermarkets to make small changes to how they sell, promote and develop food, helping to get more healthy food on their shelves and in our diets.

The policy, based on Nesta’s proposal, will mandate a minimum target for healthy food sales for the largest supermarket chains. This will require them to sell healthier food to improve their overall health score, setting a new standard across the sector.

Nesta recommends that the health score for supermarkets is calculated using the nutrient profile model (NPM), a recognised measure of how healthy food and drink products are, based on calorie content, salt, sugar, saturated fats and so on. Nesta calculates that the supermarket sector’s average converted NPM score on health is currently 67 out of 100. If a healthy food standard was set at or around 69, this could lead to a reduction in obesity by around one fifth.

The target should be set at a level that should be achievable for business, while driving meaningful improvements in national health.

Food businesses like supermarkets can use tactics already available to them to achieve this, such as promotion, advertising, placement, stocking and changing the recipes of products (e.g. reformulation). In practice, this might mean putting healthier yoghurts on offer, tweaking the recipe of sandwiches or wraps so they contain slightly less fat or giving more shelf space to cereals that have a bit less sugar. Food businesses will have time to prepare for the target coming into force, and will be free to make their own decisions about how best to meet it.

The supermarket sector is already embracing a shift to healthier sales. Most of the biggest supermarkets already set voluntary health targets, but this new target will level the playing field and enable them to go even further without losing competitive advantage.

With the right focus on getting healthier food on the shelves and in our diets, this approach could cut obesity by around a fifth and help over three million people move to a healthier weight.

Previous government action on obesity has not met the scale of the challenge or focused on the most effective solutions. We’ve relied on telling people to diet for 30 years, and at the same time, rates have doubled.

But obesity is preventable. Evidence shows that the most effective approaches to tackling it are those which make healthier food the easiest option. When Nesta modelled the impact of over 30 policies on obesity, this policy came out as one of the most effective for reducing obesity while being low-cost to administer.

The changes required for supermarkets to meet the target might seem small, but because we buy the majority (over 80%) of our calorie intake from supermarkets, they will have a significant impact at the population level over time.

Nesta modelling estimates that, over three years, this policy could reduce obesity by around a fifth, helping over three million people move to a healthy weight without requiring people to make big changes to what they eat or how much they pay for food. We estimate that over three years, this policy could save the NHS over £2 billion and bring wider benefits to society worth £17 billion: a massive win for public health.

This approach offers a way to reduce obesity without driving up costs for consumers or businesses.

Nesta’s analysis found that this policy won’t impose significant costs on businesses or consumers. As supermarkets are already required to collect the data needed to make the policy work, the additional cost required to administer it would be a small fraction of supermarkets’ operating costs and annual profits. We commissioned an independent economic assessment that concluded that, due to the small nature of changes required to hit the target for many retailers and the intense price competition within retail, there would be minimal costs to retailers, and there is little evidence that the policy will have an impact on costs to consumers.

The policy will be implemented in phases to give sufficient time for consultation and for businesses to prepare. We believe that legislation should be introduced as soon as possible, but should outline the next steps and a reasonable implementation timeline. The first key step is to establish data collection and reporting, with enforcement and penalties to follow after reporting is fully established.

We need action on obesity: rates have doubled, and now almost two-thirds of UK adults are living with excess weight.

Our health as a nation is getting worse and worse, placing unsustainable pressure on the NHS. Obesity has almost doubled in England since 1990. Now, around two in three adults in the UK are living with obesity or excess weight, and levels of childhood obesity are among the highest in Europe. Obesity costs UK society around £98 billion per year, including £19 billion to the NHS. We know most people want to be healthy, and the majority want to see government action to reduce obesity.

If we get this right, then this policy could open a new chapter in our efforts to improve our health and make a meaningful change to obesity in the UK.