Tesco's - trailblazer or not?

Supermarket shopping can be a challenge for those on special diets. Years ago when I was beginning to give dietary advice to patients with allergies, the doctor and dietitian I worked with thought it would be good for me to try an allergy diet myself, especially as I had some symptoms of food intolerance. I therefore started an anti-candida diet in combination with a wheat free one. This was GRIM. At my first foray into the local supermarket I wandered around for ten minutes with an empty trolley before finding anything I could put in it without infringing the diet. For weeks afterwards no food could be eaten spontaneously. Meticulous planning was called for.



Today my visit to the supermarket wasn't so difficult, but restricting. At the moment my blood pressure is higher than desirable and so, as well as trying to lose weight, I am reducing my salt intake. It isn't high, compared to many people's I'm sure, as I don't add salt to cooking let alone at the table.
But there's so much salt added to convenience foods and to products such as cheese, and other foods which we tend to think of as healthy, that with effort there's scope for further salt reduction. Years ago I purchased a low salt cookbook and dug it out today. It had some interesting facts. Predictably fast food places have a lot to answer for in terms of salt content. A McDonald's Big Mac can contain 1050 mg salt. If your GP recommends you reduce your salt intake to 1500 mg a day, your McDonald's lunch could therefore equal two thirds of that.

I'd had a good think before leaving home about what I should be looking for: fresh cooked beef and pork but not ham/gammon; lower salt cheeses such as ricotta and quark in preference to brie and camembert. Tinned corn packed with water and containing no added salt was easily found. I ignored the shelves of tinned soup, ready prepared chicken escalopes and cartons of smoked mackerel paté. It was hard ignoring the paté which is full of those wonderful Omega 3's that we are told are so good for our health. At the checkout my trolley looked very different to normal, bar a few concessions for my son who can't give up scarily- high- sodium- content crisps and barbecued chicken. I'd hovered for a suspiciously long time at the shelves of cheese, scrutinising salt contents. And it was at that point I realised that if I was struggling, customers with little or no nutritional knowledge must be even more baffled and anxious when making recommended dietary changes.

This prompted me to speak to the senior manager on duty. I began with some sweet-talking ( I reject the word sycophantic) about Tescos having a good reputation and caring for the health of its patrons. I explained that I was struggling to search for low salt foods despite having a dietitian's knowledge, and how I thought it would be great if Tescos were to signpost customers to low salt varieties, elaborating that just as there were organic sections, there could be low salt ones. The lower salt cheeses, for example, could be shelved together, as could other low salt goods.

I felt heard, and when the manager informed me that the branch manager to whom he'd pass on my suggestion, had a nut allergy, I hoped this meant my idea be taken seriously. In addition to this, information could and should be given to help customers interpret food labelling. It's only too easy for manufacturers to mislead consumers on the contents of their products.

Had I been more pushy/business orientated, I might have offered to take on this task if they paid me. But my dietitian's state registration lapsed years ago when I switched to health promotion work. What an opportunity though. And how many people could potentially benefit. With more and more convenience foods ever appearing on shelves, as a nation we run higher risks of consuming far more salt than is healthy for us, with the concomitant risks such behaviour carries.

Worth thinking about....

Weightily yours


Jane