Sugar levy | Waitrose

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While sugary foods and drinks can be enjoyable, eating too many can lead to increased risk of
tooth decay, weight gain and diabetes.

Sugar reduction is an important part of Waitrose product development and is a key part of our nutrition strategy. We work closely with our suppliers on continuous nutritional improvements
to Waitrose own-label products, which includes removing some of the sugar.

When lowering the amount of sugar in any product, the new recipe always goes to a taste panel to ensure we maintain taste and quality.

“We know that making small nutritional improvements to the foods and drinks that we eat
most often can help our customers to eat more healthily. We support the Government’s
sugar reduction and wider reformulation programme, and have been gradually reducing
the sugar in several product areas since 2015.”
Moira Howie, Waitrose Nutrition and Health Manager

Early work focused on removing sugar from everyday breakfast cereals and yogurts, which provide important nutrients to the nation’s diet and can form part of a healthy, balanced diet. Waitrose has also made significant progress in soft drinks whilst ensuring that we continue to offer choice for all our customers. More recently our reformulation work has focused on chilled desserts, hot cross buns, ice creams and lollies. We will continue to offer more indulgent food and drink alongside many healthier choices. For more information about how we’re helping our customers
to make simple, healthier choices every day, please visit www.waitrose.co.uk/goodhealth

Soft drinks

Since work began in 2015 there is now approximately 480 tonnes less sugar per year in our soft drinks range. The sugar levels have been lowered by an average of 40% across the range.

In 2018, we have already taken out 265 tonnes or 63 million teaspoons of sugar, with the latest
soft drink recipes hitting shelves from April.

These products were reformulated ahead of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, which came into force
on 6th April 2018. The levy may result in a price change to soft drinks over certain sugar thresholds. This additional cost will be used to contribute to Government plans to tackle childhood obesity.

We’ve worked hard to revise our recipes to ensure that none of our new ambient soft drinks will incur the highest levy and 80% of Waitrose own-label soft drinks range will not incur the levy.

“We’re focused on giving our customers choice. Instead of simply swapping all sugar in
our own-label soft drinks for sweeteners – which some of our shoppers tell us impacts
the flavour – we’re offering lower sugar alternatives of our original recipes alongside
sugar-free options containing sweeteners.”
Simon Moore, Waitrose Director of Technical & Corporate Social Responsibility

Breakfast cereals

In 2016 we reviewed our breakfast cereal range and cut the sugar in 22 own-label recipes by an average of 15%. This work included bran flakes and malted wheats, which now have 30% less sugar.

But we didn’t stop there. We have since reformulated ten more products, including some of our granolas and mueslis, with the latest recipes landing on shelves in spring 2018. Our work to date has cut 134 tonnes of sugar per year from our customers' shopping baskets.

Yogurts

Since 2015 we’ve also lowered the sugar in both our Low Fat and West Country yogurt ranges, achieving an average reduction of 14%. Taking some of the sugar out of our yogurts has saved over 4 million teaspoons of sugar per year.

Ice cream

In 2017 we worked on 15 of our essential Waitrose, Duchy Organic and Waitrose Dairy ice creams and lollies to develop new recipes with less sugar. This work has seen the sugar in essential Waitrose Vanilla Soft Scoop ice cream cut by 15%, with an overall average sugar reduction of 8% across the new recipes.

Chilled desserts

In September 2017, we lowered the sugar in fifteen Waitrose chilled desserts by an average of 14% – equivalent to more than 39 tonnes of sugar per year. Traditional sharing family favourites such as Waitrose Mixed Berry Trifle and Apple Pie, as well as individual desserts such as our Cappuccino Mousse now have less sugar, but even more taste!

Aileen Wood, Waitrose Desserts Buyer, said: “We found that by removing some of the sugar in our cappuccino mousse we actually enhanced the coffee flavour.”

Hot cross buns

In January 2018, we took out some of the added sugar from five of our Waitrose hot cross bun lines. Our Richly Fruited Hot Cross Buns now have
5% less sugar, but we haven’t taken away
any of the delicious fruit.

Look out for the new Good Health mark on our wholemeal hot cross buns, indicating that they are a source of fibre and have no red traffic lights for fat, saturates, sugars or salt.