This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Leading UK food and drink manufacturers could significantly improve the overall nutrition and sustainability of their products by making changes to 10% or less of their existing product line, according to new research in Nature Food. The authors looked at foods sold in the UK by 44 major food and beverage manufacturers—which account for approximately 50% of the UK food retail market—and assigned nutrition and sustainability scores per 100g to each product.
They found significant variation in similar products among different manufacturers. For instance, a ready meal from one manufacturer might be much less nutritious and sustainable than a similar product from another manufacturer. The authors then looked at what might happen if manufacturers swapped some of their least nutritious and sustainable products with products that had closer-to-average scores and found significant potential for improvement.
For many manufacturers, more than half the potential improvements were achieved by changing 10% or less of their product line. Two well-known British supermarkets, whose own brands collectively account for 28.9% of sales value in this analysis, have some of the greatest scope to improve their environmental and nutrition scores, the authors find. But manufacturers with narrow product ranges, such as snack and energy drink manufacturers, generally have less scope to improve their scores.
"Ours is the first study we are aware of to assess the capacity for food and beverage manufacturers to support nutrition and environmental sustainability through changes within their existing product portfolios," explains lead author Eleanor Hammond, who conducted the research while working at the University of Oxford. "If food systems are to transition to more nutritious and environmentally sustainable outcomes, food manufacturers are going to have to change the products they sell. This change can either be driven by food and beverage manufacturers or imposed on them by government policy.
Our findings show manufacturers can get a head start on this necessary transition by making small changes to their product portfolios today," says co-author Dr. Michael Clark, associate professor of sustainable food solutions at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. The timing of the study is significant, as the UK government is under pressure to bring forward legislation requiring mandatory reporting on the nutrition of UK food and beverage products.
"Our study demonstrates how the UK government could monitor both sustainability and nutritional outcomes together. It could also be used for ESG reporting and support regulatory frameworks such as the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive," Clark says. Eleanor Hammond et al, Large nutritional and environmental improvements can be achieved across the product portfolios of major UK food and beverage manufacturers, Nature Food (2026).
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