Tesco to hand out free fruit to shoppers’ children

Tesco is promising to take some of the pain out of the weekly grocery shop for parents by offering free fruit for children to munch on.

The UK’s biggest supermarket tested the initiative in Scotland last year and will now offer a selection of apples, citrus fruit and bananas for parents to pick up at the start of their shopping trip in 800 UK stores. The retailer is facing fierce competition from fast-growing discounters Aldi and Lidl, and is looking for ways to win over shoppers.

The idea came from one of its checkout assistants, Maria Simpson, who works in a Lincolnshire store. She suggested that handing out free fruit to children would provide a healthy alternative to sweets – often a last resort for harassed parents.

Two years ago Tesco became the first major retailer to remove sweets and chocolates from its checkouts and in 2015 it announced all the children’s lunchbox-sized soft drinks it sells would have no added sugar. It expects to give away 1m pieces of fruit each month as part of the new healthy eating push.

“We are Britain’s biggest greengrocer, so we want to make it easier for parents to get their children eating more healthily,” said Tesco’s UK chief, Matt Davies. “As a dad, I know it can be tricky getting children to eat their fruit and vegetables, so we’re hoping this initiative will help create healthy eating habits that will stay with children as they grow up.”

Related: UK supermarket sales suffer worst fall for at least two years

The British Heart Foundation has welcomed the idea. Its chief executive, Simon Gillespie, said: “It’s a positive step towards improving children’s health throughout the UK and helps parents ensure their children get their five portions of fruit and vegetables every day.”

Tesco group chief executive Dave Lewis, a former Unilever executive, is trying to rehabilitate the company . He has encouraged staff to improve the service for shoppers under the slogan “every little help makes a big difference” with initiatives such as distributing unsold food to charities and tackling food waste.

Tesco to hand out free fruit to shoppers’ children

Shoppers could save £440 a yr swapping wheatgrass for broccoli

The Which? report located that purchasing kiwi fruit instead of blueberries expense half as a lot and had a similar amount of nutritional vitamins. Photograph: Bon Appetit/Alamy

Shoppers could conserve hundreds of lbs a year by swapping pricey and fashionable “superfoods” this kind of as blueberries and wheatgrass for less costly options, according to research published on Monday.

Which? stated shoppers could save up to £440 a year by ditching popular superfoods in favour of much better worth choices that offer you equivalent wellness advantages.

Substituting a handful of blueberries, at 69p, for a portion for two kiwi fruit, costing half the value at 34p, for example, would give a weekly conserving of £36.forty a yr and the green fruit has a similar sum of vitamins C and K.

In one particular of the greatest single financial savings, shoppers could save £268.32 by buying fresh sardines, costing 42p for 140g, alternatively of fresh salmon at £3 for 140g and nevertheless get a good amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids EPA and DHA. The government’s food watchdog, the Meals Specifications Agency, recommends we eat two portions of fish a week – one of them oily.

Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which?, mentioned: “You will not need to have to break the bank to consume healthily. We have found you can swap some superfoods for less expensive alternatives and save a packet even though even now acquiring the nutritional vitamins you require.”

The customer group calculated the annual saving that could be manufactured by swapping 5 superfoods with less costly choices using prices from Tesco.com and healthfood shop Holland &amp Barrett in early July. The total of £438.88 assumed buyers normally ate each meals twice a week.

The notoriously expensive wheatgrass – championed by celebrities this kind of as Gwyneth Paltrow and Elle McPherson as an crucial ingredient in a juice or smoothie – does not count in direction of your five a day, but a portion of broccoli does.

Broccoli is less expensive as nicely as easier to discover in the outlets, although each have chlorophyll, vitamins A, C and E, iron and calcium. Wheatgrass generally fees 90p for 10g even though broccoli is a much more affordable 11p for 80g.

Similarly goji berries – favoured by Madonna and Mischa Barton but used in Chinese medicine for much more than six,000 years – can be substituted with spinach for similar well being rewards. It is claimed these shrivelled red berries – rich in vitamins A, B2, C and iron help boost the immune program and brain activity, protect towards heart ailment and cancer, and improve existence expectancy.

A 30g serving of dried goji berries – the equivalent of a heaped tablespoon – and costing all around 53p – counts in the direction of your five a day. But the dried fruit also consists of large amounts of sugar. A portion of spinach (32p for 80g) can be a less costly stand-in, saving 42p a week and £21.84 a 12 months.

A more healthy – as nicely as cost-effective – alternative was identified for coconut oil, which is hailed as one of the very best sources of heart-healthy medium-chain fatty acids, notably lauric acid, however is high in saturated body fat. When Which? surveyed 1,032 members on the internet in Could, 13% explained they had utilized coconut oil in cooking.

The buyer group’s nutritionists recommend swapping the item – which charges 32p per tablespoon – for rapeseed or sunflower oil – 3p per tablespoon – conserving 58p a week and £30.sixteen a yr.

Shoppers could save £440 a yr swapping wheatgrass for broccoli

Anxious effectively: half of shoppers now purchase "free from" generate for meals intolerance

Last week, its variety expanded to 150 items, with new items this kind of as green olive ciabatta rolls, baguettes, pizza bases, tea cakes and loaves, all-butter fruit scones and golden syrup pancakes. Two gluten-free of charge beers are now on sale for the very first time.

Data from Kantar Worldpanel shows that a lot more than half of Britons – 55.two per cent – are now acquiring “free from” goods.

The market place, which was worth just £173 million in 2009, is now worth twice as much – valued at £355 million in 2014.

The sector is anticipated to expand even more and by 2018 could be really worth £538 million, in accordance to forecasts by client analysts Mintel.

Trade magazine The Grocer described “free from” create as “one particular of grocery’s fantastic success stories”.

“Free of charge from’s march on the British mainstream has been lent a massive assisting hand by higher-profile endorsements from celebrities this kind of as Victoria Beckham, Jessica Alba and Miley Cyrus,” it said.

“It is clear way of life choice plays a big component in the sector’s good results. Far much more buyers purchase into free of charge from than have been diagnosed with a meals-connected issue.

“For illustration, just a single per cent of the Uk population has been diagnosed with coeliac disease – an autoimmune condition that requires sufferers to keep away from all gluten – and an estimated 15 per cent are intolerant to lactose. ”

David Jago, director innovation and insight at Mintel, stated increasing availability and selection had contibuted to the rise in popularity of the variety.

“The style element helped to get it off the ground but it truly is received beyond that now,” he said.

“There are a good deal more items out there and they are a good deal far better top quality than they utilised to be. And there’s significantly greater presence and visibility in-retailer. It is no longer a ghetto ”

Tesco purchaser Lauren Tredgett informed the magazine that “the massive development in demand is becoming driven by an boost in clients getting to be a lot more conscious of their intolerance to wheat and gluten”.

Anxious effectively: half of shoppers now purchase "free from" generate for meals intolerance

Aetna, Humana, Blue Cross Snag Obamacare"s Bargain Shoppers

Americans purchasing on government-run exchanges for health insurance primarily based on the price of premiums leaned towards strategies from Aetna Aetna’s Coventry business, Humana Humana (HUM) or the array of Blue Cross plans sold by Wellpoint (WLP), according to a new review out this week.

Based on costs they supply in following fall’s open enrollment period for coverage in 2015, this kind of competitive pricing could assist them expand their membership amongst folks getting coverage on exchanges below the Affordable Care Act.

In regions exactly where these firms participated on the exchanges underneath the Inexpensive Care Act, people have been most likely to take into account merchandise supplied by Coventry, the Aetna (AET) subsidiary, which had 54 percent of its programs competitively priced, in accordance to an analysis by Avalere Wellness, a research and advisory services firm on well being policy issues tracking the Cost-effective Care Act.

A plan was considered competitively priced if it was at or under the benchmark prepare, or the “second-lowest price silver program in the area.” For the most part, silver programs cover 70 % of a subscriber’s health-related care expenses, but they could cover much more depending on income-based mostly subsidies.

Avalere vice president Caroline Pearson Pearson, in a statement accompanying the firm’s evaluation stated consumers buying on exchanges are “extremely cost-sensitive.”

For the duration of a parade of very first-quarter earnings conference calls, insurance firm after insurance firm confirmed that the silver strategies had been the going away favourite selection of buyers buying on the exchanges.

Humana had 45 percent of its strategies competitively priced. Wellpoint, which operates Blue Cross and Blue Shield strategies across the nation including people under the Anthem brand,  had 38 percent of its programs competitively priced.

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Aetna, Humana, Blue Cross Snag Obamacare"s Bargain Shoppers