Healthy Choices
Our Health Strategy
As a major UK food retailer serving millions of customers each week, Asda has an important role in helping customers access, afford and choose healthier food.
In 2024, we relaunched our health strategy, building on Asda's long-standing commitment to improving health outcomes. This includes pioneering front-of-pack traffic light labelling and introducing our Live Better icon to help customers identify healthier choices more easily.
Through our strategy, we support national efforts to improve diet quality and reduce health inequalities by making healthier choices more accessible. Our approach focuses on two priorities: encouraging healthier customer choices and improving the nutritional quality of our own-brand products. We continue to work with leading organisations to better understand evolving customer needs and behaviours, using insight and research to inform our actions.
Progress is measured using the 2004/05 Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM), which tracks the health profile of our product range. In 2025, our sales-weighted average health score improved for the second consecutive year, decreasing from 1.77 to 1.50. This demonstrates that healthier choices can be delivered at scale while remaining affordable, accessible and appealing to customers.
Building on this progress, we remain focused on improving the nutritional quality of our products and helping customers make healthier choices every time they shop with us.
Partnering with Nesta to Support Healthier Choices
At Asda, we believe retailers have an important role to play in helping customers make healthier choices. That's why we partnered with Nesta,, the innovation and research organisation whose mission is to help people live longer, healthier lives and contribute to halving obesity in the UK.
In 2025, we completed a series of in-store trials testing practical, scalable interventions designed to influence healthier purchasing behaviour. The trials explored how measures such as product placement, incentives and customer messaging can support healthier choices as part of everyday shopping.
The results showed that relatively simple interventions can have a positive impact. For example, a £5 produce voucher scheme trialled through Asda pharmacies led participating customers to purchase 10.1% more fruit and vegetables as part of their shopping basket.
While voucher redemption was 7%, the trial provided valuable insight into the role incentives can play in encouraging healthier purchasing decisions. It also highlighted the importance of combining multiple interventions to drive behaviour change at scale.
These learnings will help inform future approaches to supporting healthier choices and improving diet quality for our customers.
Using the Government’s Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM), we have set out our ambition to improve the average sales weighted* health score of the food we sell, both branded and own-brand, year on year. In the NPM, points are allocated based on a product’s negative nutrients i.e. energy, saturated fat, sugar and salt and deducted for positive nutrients i.e. fibre, protein and % fruit, veg & nuts.
The lower the score, the healthier the product with products deemed ‘unhealthy’ (HFSS**) scoring above 1 (for drinks) or 4 (for food).
* Our Health Score is defined not only by the type of products we sell but also quantities sold (sales weighted) of said products. If we sell predominantly healthy products our business health score would be lower.
** High fat, salt and sugar
Impact of HFSS legislation on consumer behaviour
In 2022, legislation was introduced across England to restrict the placement of products high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) in prominent in-store and online locations. In partnership with the Leeds Institute of Data Analytics, we assessed the impact of HFSS (high fat, salt and sugar) location restrictions on customer purchasing behaviour.
The study found a 0.63% reduction in HFSS product sales following the introduction of the legislation, equivalent to one fewer HFSS product purchased for every 100 products sold. While small, this demonstrates how changes to the retail environment can influence purchasing decisions across millions of shopping journeys.
The findings have provided valuable insight into how customers respond to healthier retail environments and are helping to shape our Healthy Choices programme. These learnings will inform future initiatives that make healthier options more visible, accessible and appealing, supporting customers to make healthier choices when they shop with us.
Live Better Icon
The Live Better icon was created to make healthy eating simple and for customers to see at a glance the healthiest choices across all Asda brands and ranges.
It is awarded to products that meet the below criteria:
• be non-high fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) in accordance with the UK’s 2004-2005 Nutrient Profiling Model
• have a defined nutritional benefit, as listed on the GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register*
• no red traffic lights (unless entirely driven by fruits, vegetables, nuts or oily fish)
• meet our nutritionists’ category specific criteria e.g., bread must be high in fibre.
Live Better products are aligned to The Eatwell Guide** which supports more sustainable eating patterns.
*A health claim is any statement about a relationship between food and health.
**The Eatwell Guide shows how much of what we eat overall should come from each food group to achieve a healthy, balanced diet
DID YOU KNOW?
Product Innovation
Feeding the nation means meeting the requirements of a range of diets and our chefs are continually developing new ranges to suit.
Our Plant Based range, which is accredited by The Vegan Society, offers customers healthy, sustainable choices that are suitable for vegans.