DT News - UK - Removing sweets from checkouts reduces overall unhealthy purchases, study finds

Dental Tribune International

Mon. 4 February 2019

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LONDON, UK: According to 2017 statistics released by the NHS, there were more than 40,000 hospital operations to extract teeth in children and teenagers in 2016. In a new study, researchers have found that policies aimed at removing sweets and crisps from checkouts led to a dramatic reduction in the amount of unhealthy food purchased, something that may help improve not only the oral health but also the general health of millions of people.

“Many snacks picked up at the checkout may be unplanned, impulse buys and the options tend to be confectionary, chocolate or crisps,” explained co-author Dr Jean Adams, a senior university lecturer at the Centre for Diet and Activity Research at the University of Cambridge. “Several supermarkets have now introduced policies to remove these items from their checkouts, and we wanted to know if this had any impact on people’s purchasing choices.”

Immediately after introducing such policies, 17 per cent fewer small packages of sugary confectionery, chocolate and crisps were bought and taken home, according to the study’s results. Even more noticeable, compared with supermarkets that still sold confectionary at the checkout with those that did not, 76 per cent fewer purchases were bought and eaten as on-the-go snacks.

Adams and a team of researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Stirling and Newcastle focused their research on six out of nine major supermarkets that introduced checkout food policies between 2013 and 2017. Using data collected from Kantar Worldpanel, the consumer panel for food, beverages and household products, the team looked at the purchasing habits of over 30,000 UK households from 12 months before to 12 months after implementation of the policy.

Despite the positive results, however, the researchers pointed out that, since the study was not a randomised control trial, it was not possible to say definitely that the changes in purchasing behaviour were due to the checkout food policies. “It may seem obvious that removing unhealthy food options from the checkout would reduce the amount that people buy, but it is evidence such as this that helps build the case for government interventions to improve unhealthy behaviours,” said Adams.

The study, titled “Supermarket policies on less-healthy food at checkouts: Natural experimental evaluation using interrupted time series analyses of purchases”, was published on 18 December 2018 in PLOS Medicine.

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