Everyone deserves to live a long and healthy life, no matter where they live or their life circumstances. But right now in the UK, almost two-thirds of people are living with excess weight and obesity.

Our previous research showed that a reduction of just 8.5% in the daily calorie intake of those living with excess weight, the equivalent of around 216 calories per person per day, could halve the prevalence of obesity. 

In this project, we’ve analysed food purchasing habits across Great Britain to show what those small changes would look like in a ‘typical’ food basket without reducing the joy we all take from food.

What we eat is heavily influenced by the availability and convenience of food, by advertising prompts and by the information that surrounds us – this is our food environment. In this project, we used Kantar’s Worldpanel Take Home and Out of Home datasets to build an accurate picture of our weekly shopping habits and identify small changes we make to improve our diets.

Our aim was to use this information to create typical shopping baskets of food and apply minor changes to those baskets to achieve the 8.5% daily calorie reduction needed to halve the prevalence of obesity. We intend this work to show that changes could be achieved without increasing the cost of a typical weekly shop or reducing the joy we take from food. What’s more, they could be achieved by relatively imperceptible changes in our food environment.

Our research has shown:

• In Britain, we purchase on average ~2,730 calories per person per day – a much higher figure than previous national estimates and we are still likely underestimating true consumption.
• On average, we get 89% of our daily calories from food and drink prepared and consumed in the home, making supermarkets critical partners in shifting our food environment.
• Less than a third of the products in our lower calorie basket have changed to reach the desired reduction, demonstrating that the changes required to reduce the calories in a weekly shopping basket by 8.5% are relatively minor.
• These changes can be achieved either through product replacement via price promotions, advertising, product placement and availability changes, reformulation or portion size reduction.
• Similar changes can be applied to the weekly shop of people in  lower income groups, with an 8.5% reduction in calories still being reached.