Institute for Grocery Distribution (IGD)

In May 2021 we announced a new partnership with the IGD (Institute of Grocery Distribution) and their Healthy and Sustainable Diets Project group, involving 20 partners from food retail and manufacturing.  We have worked together to identify key metrics to evaluate the success of pilot trials to encourage healthier and more sustainable diets, using the Eatwell Guide as a model.

Initial descriptive results from the first trial, run by Sainsbury’s, discounting a range of fruit and vegetables to 60p, is published in the IGD report – Healthy, Sustainable Diets: Driving Change: https://www.igd.com/articles/article-viewer/t/driving-change/i/29113.  These initial results, showing that 4.9 million more portions of fruit and vegetables were sold across the intervention periods in 2020 and 2021, build upon the process of acquiring, preparing and analysing over 23 million baskets of data!  More detailed analysis and impact on the wider basket will follow in 2022.

This analysis work was primarily carried out by former LIDA intern Alexandra Dalton.  More information from Alexandra about how we will evaluate these interventions during the coronavirus pandemic can be found here: https://www.cdrc.ac.uk/palatable-change-from-the-pandemic/.

This partnership continues strongly into 2022, with lots more insights to come from five further pilot trials underway in stores, with a variety of partners, around the UK.