The Welsh government plans to make changes to how retailers provide meal deals, aiming to promote healthy diets. Both retailers and customers are concerned about this proposal.
The Welsh Government consultation report on Healthy Food Environment stressed how to tackle obesity in Wales. One of the proposals is to reduce unhealthy food and drinks sold in supermarkets. According to a report conducted by Cancer Research UK, many people buy unhealthy food as the discount label and promotions attracted them.
There could be restrictions on mead deals in Wales as part of Welsh government plans to stop promotions of unhealthy food and drink. It’s in an effort to tackle obesity.
But, Sophie Johns, a student who often buys meal deals to save time and money, says it’s unreasonable to scrap meal deals.
A Cardiff based nutritionist, Huw Barnes, says restricting meal deals cannot solve the obesity issue properly.
Christine Bundy is Professor of Health Psychology and Behavioural Medicine at Cardiff University. She says what the government did is not helpful to encourage people to change their unhealthy diet.
Christine Bundy introduced the COM behaviour model, which shows if you want to change people’s behaviour, you should provide three components to help them: Capacity, Opportunity and Motivation instead of juts banning meal deal. “Capacity” means to help people equipped with healthy knowledge, “Motivation” means let people know how healthy food can help them to have a good condition, “Opportunity” means to the government need to corporate with retailers to provide high quality food at lower price.
A meal deal is kind of promotion offer which boost the sales in retail stores, the restriction of it may also put a challenge to the retail business. When people facing the pressure of increased living cost, lower price is the main point to attract people to buy.
The head of the Welsh Retail Consortium, Sara Jones, says meal deals attract customers when the price of everything has gone up. Such restriction of meal deals may impact retail businesses. They hope Welsh Ministers will keep consumers in mind as this process continues over the coming months.
A Welsh Government spokesperson said:
“We are considering the next steps on price promotions and no final position has been made following the public consultation. It’s important to note that we are not proposing to ban meal deals, but we are considering whether there should be promotion restrictions on high fat, salt and sugar products, which could include meal deal promotions.”