Making good food even better

We've removed 716 tonnes of sugar per year from our customers baskets
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 & Partners product development and is a key part of our nutrition strategy. We work closely with our suppliers on continuous nutritional improvements
to Waitrose & Partners 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.
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 & Partners 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
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 & Partners own-label soft drinks range will not incur
the levy.
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.
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.