One of Nesta’s missions is to help more people live a healthy life for longer by halving the level of obesity. But Scotland is facing a huge challenge as increasing numbers of people struggle to maintain a healthy weight – which comes at great personal and social cost.

The trend in unhealthy weight is heavily influenced by the foods around us: not just what’s conveniently available, but also the information and prompts that surround us. It all shapes our opportunity to be healthy – and our lives are saturated with unhealthy influence.

Nesta is working to increase the accessibility, availability and affordability of healthy food and, crucially, to retain the pleasure and joy we all get from eating. It’s a mission also shared by Food and Drink Federation Scotland (FDFS), through its Scottish Government-funded Reformulation for Health programme.

Changing ingredients to improve health

One way we can still enjoy our favourite foods and maintain a healthy weight is by industry making small changes to existing food products to improve their healthiness, known as reformulation. This can be done in a number of ways, increasing the amount of healthier ingredients such as fruit and veg or fibre, or reducing the proportion of less healthy ingredients such as salt, sugar or saturated fat.

Reformulation is actually happening all the time in our favourite products: for health reasons but also in response to shortages or price rises for certain ingredients, to avoid allergens or just to adapt to changing consumer tastes. The soft drinks industry levy, commonly known as the 'sugar tax', is an example of a reformulation for health, which made a product healthier but didn’t affect sales.

Manufacturers see some reformulation as a selling point and promote it to encourage new consumers. Other manufacturers choose silent reformulation, where the reformulation is done and either not promoted or done gradually over time, so consumers don’t notice the change. Either way it is a powerful tool to support healthier food environments that can help us tackle obesity.

However, reformulation isn’t always easy or straightforward and can increase costs for businesses. Some types of food products lend themselves more easily to adaptation than others and consumer tastes can restrict the level of change manufacturers are willing to make.

Working with the food and drink industry

We recently partnered with FDFS to investigate the scale and make up of Scottish food manufacturing in order to establish the scope of potential reformulation activity on the calorie content of food produced and sold in Scotland.

Scotland has a rich and proud cultural heritage associated with food and drink produce but many traditional Scottish family favourites such as Scotch pies, sausage rolls, cakes and biscuits are traditionally high in fat, salt, sugar and calories.

FDFS’ Reformulation for Health programme, funded by the Scottish Government, works to help Scottish SME food and drink manufacturers making commonly consumed foods improve the healthiness of their products. The programme has engaged with hundreds of businesses and supported food manufacturers to remove billions of calories and tonnes and salt, fat and sugar from the Scottish diet.

The associated costs of reformulating can be prohibitive to SME food manufacturers. To help with this FDFS has delivered six rounds of funding which has helped over 60 businesses make some of their products healthier including Aberdeen’s iconic butteries and developing lower salt and fat scotch pie shells but there is still a long way to go to make Scotland’s favourites healthier, especially in the sweeter categories where indulgence can be a barrier to reformulation.

Unmet potential for reformulation

The Nesta and FDF Scotland research has highlighted the scale and breadth of the food manufactured in Scotland for the retail and wholesale sectors and the as yet unmet potential for reformulation across popular food categories.

The analysis shows, if we were to reformulate the food products produced in Scotland by 53 major manufacturers across the nine categories best suited to reformulation would result in relatively small changes in calorie intake per person per day. However, given the sales and market share of these popular products, across the population the total calories removed from the nation's diets would be up to 14 billion per year.

The research will help to inform the focus of FDF Scotland’s work going forward and provide insights into the range and scale of the products produced in Scotland that we are eating everyday.

One issue it has highlighted is the need for greater buy-in for reformulation for health if we are to reach the number of Scottish manufacturers producing our food, particularly in the categories the research focused on .

Investing in reformulation

Reformulation, if delivered across a wide enough range of products to help reduce our daily calories, is a key part of the solution to the obesity crisis in Scotland. Proper support for and investment in by government, industry stakeholders and business is the key to impactful change.

Both Nesta and FDF Scotland recognise the importance of programmes such as Reformulation for Health and the need for the food industry to embrace reformulation and put healthy, accessible, affordable and delicious products on shelves in communities across Scotland.