Healthier living

Healthy living remains high on the UK Government’s agenda. Taking effective action on diet and exercise now will help to tackle heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a whole range of factors critical to our health and wellbeing.

The current picture is not a healthy one:

• Obesity is a growing problem for both adults and children. In 2009, 22% of men and 24% of women, 15% of girls and 16% of boys aged 2 to 15 were classed as obese (Health Survey for England, 2009)
• Diets are typically high in saturated fat, salt and added sugar, and low in fibre and essential vitamins and minerals. The majority of adults consume less than 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, almost 9 grams of salt and nearly 13% of calories are supplied by saturated fats (National Diet and Nutrition Survey, (combined) 2008/2009-2009/10)
• Inactive lifestyles are known to contribute to ill health. In 2008 39% of men and 29% of women were achieving the recommended levels of physical activity to benefit their health (Health Survey for England, 2008)

We believe that Boots UK has a role to play in helping to address concerns over unhealthy diets and rising levels of obesity. In March 2011 our parent company, Alliance Boots, signed up to the Department of Health Public Health Responsibility Deal. As a Responsibility Deal partner we support the following core commitments:

• We recognise that we have a vital role to play in improving people’s health
• We will encourage and enable people to adopt a healthier diet
• We will foster a culture of responsible drinking, which will help people to drink within guidelines
• We will encourage and assist people to become more physically active
• We will actively support our workforce to lead healthier lives

We want to use our expertise to help our customers make positive changes and live healthier lives. This goal is reflected in both the range of products that we offer and the way that we develop them:

• Our healthy eating lunch-time foods, drinks and snacking products are developed in accordance with healthy eating guidelines for fat, saturated fat and salt in particular*
• Our nutrition labelling is clear and informative*
• We offer products to support breastfeeding mothers and a range of baby / toddler foods and drinks
• We offer an extensive range of vitamins and nutritional supplements to complement a healthy diet
• We have products and services to help our customers manage their weight
• We help our customers make positive changes in their lives to improve their health such as stopping smoking and being more physically active

* Boots UK's commitment to healthier living is underpinned by our healthy eating approach that adopts strict nutrition criteria for the entire Shapers and Delicious ranges of lunchtime food, drink and snacking products. We also introduced the Food Standards Agency (FSA) traffic light colour coding in May 2007. In 2011 we added Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) to the front of the pack too. This helps our customers put healthy eating into practice. For each product you can instantly see the amount of calories, fat, saturated fat, salt and sugars in a serving and the percentage GDA contribution along with the traffic light colour code that indicates whether the levels are high (red), medium (amber) or low (green) in line with FSA guidance.

For example: