Meet Kirstie Jackson, our Own Brand Product & Project manager and learn about her perspective on PHE’s Sugar Reduction Programme

There has been an increase in pressure from the media and concerned parties to reduce the population’s obesity levels, especially in our children. However, the challenge of tackling obesity is complex, with no one single solution.

In August 2016 the government set out its approach to reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity. Working with Public Health England they have issued a structured sugar reduction programme to encourage the removal of sugar in everyday products. The food and drink industry are tasked to reduce at least 20% of sugar by 2020 through removal of sugar, reduction in portion size or shifting purchasing towards lower sugar alternatives.

Here at Bidfood we are fully supportive of the PHE initiative, we want to offer our customers choice and encourage a step forward towards lower sugar alternatives within the out of home sector. Within our own brands I work alongside the category teams to develop, appraise and approve reduced sugar recipes and we are currently working on the nine key categories. Our priorities are quality and taste without compromise.

Nine key focus categories for sugar reduction;

With extensive work going into reformulating, benchmarking and tasting we have already made some amazing steps forward in our journey to less sugar!

We have successfully reformulated our Everyday Favourites ice cream range with a staggering 23% sugar reduction managing to maintain the same great quality and taste. Another very successful reformulation was to 4 of our Everyday Favourites traycakes not only with removal of sugar but our lemon drizzle now contains Sicilian lemon juice rather than a syrup and our Victoria sponge jam now has a higher fruit content!

Our work will continue and we have some amazing developments in the pipeline to reduce sugar in our sector – but with the successful work we have carried out so far we have learnt that less can be more and we really have created a positive approach to sugar reduction.

Sweet enough already, here’s some top tips:

• Something for everyone – Give your customers choice, making them aware of lower sugar alternatives
• Keep up to date – We are continually working on widening the range of reduced sugar options so make sure you’re up to date with the latest product developments and launches
• No Compromise – We carry out extensive work to ensure there is no compromise when developing a lower sugar product, have confidence that less can be more!

Why not take a look at our wider piece on how we are Supporting Public Health England’s Sugar Reduction Plan.