"Credit crunch brings big rise in supermarket offers on sugary foods"

Guardian, Monday 1 September page 5:

"Supermarkets have dramatically increased cut-price promotions of cheap sugary amd fatty foods as the credit crunch bites, a consumer watchdog [National Consumer Council] says today ....."

....."only one in eight promotions features fruit and vegetables ....."

....."The NCC ranks supermarkets according to four health indicators ... Overall, Sainsbury's came top for the second time in a row, with the Co-op second, Waitrose third, Marks and Spencer fourth, Asda and Tesco joint fifth, Somerfield seventh and Morrisons last ....."

..... "Tesco questioned the NCC's method of judging nutrition labelling, saying its bias towards one colour-coded system recommended by the FSA clouded the facts. Morrisons also rejected the findings, saying "It's six months out of date, contains a number of inaccuracies and is a largely subjective assessement ....."

But a spokeswoman for the NCC discounted the reasonal argument, "We include frozen and tinned fruit and vegetables. Supermarkets could discount what there is and we did not find they were doing so. A spot-check like this is totally fair. We set out to replicate what it is like for a normal shopper.

Full article here and a BBC News article on the same subject here which adds "The Co-op, Tesco and Waitrose were praised for not having sweets at the check-out - but M&S scored zero for displaying a wide range of sweets and snacks at checkouts, although it says it intends to remove confectionery by January next year."