Oxford researchers suggest small product swaps could lift UK F&B nutrition and sustainability

New research by the University of Oxford suggests that UK food and beverage (F&B) manufacturers could significantly improve their nutrition and sustainability profiles by swapping out items with the lowest scores for these credentials — without needing to launch a new product. 

The study evaluated foods sold by 44 major producers representing approximately half of the UK food retail market, finding that changing only 10% or fewer of their product offerings achieved this effect.

The paper points to two well-known UK supermarkets as having the widest scope to improve their environmental sustainability and nutrition scores. Their private label products collectively account for 28.9% of the producers’ sales value.

However, the authors note that manufacturers with narrower product ranges, such as snack and energy drink producers, generally have less scope to improve their scores.

Exploring the relevance of these findings for brands, Nutrition Insight speaks to lead author Eleanor Hammond and Dr. Michael Clark, associate professor of Sustainable Food Solutions at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, UK.

“Our research investigated what would happen if a manufacturer replaced certain percentages of their worst-scoring products — meaning their least nutritious and least [environmentally] sustainable products — with medium-scoring products within that same food category, within their own product portfolio,” explains Hammond.

“Taking a biscuit as an example, a single product type can have many different ingredient compositions across different manufacturers, for instance, whether it contains chocolate or is high in sugar. This means there is significant variation in nutrition and sustainability scores for the same food across different brands.”

Determining smart swaps

Writing in Nature Food, the researchers assigned nutrition and environmental sustainability scores per 100 g of each manufacturer’s individual products.

“For nutrition, the food product’s characteristics that worsen the nutritional score are saturated fat, sugar, sodium, and total energy content, while the characteristics that improve the nutritional score are fiber, protein, and fruit-nut-vegetable content,” details Hammond.

“For sustainability, products with high environmental impacts per unit weight — such as chocolate and certain dairy products — contribute to a poor sustainability score.”

The study authors found substantial variations between similar products from different manufacturers. For instance, a ready meal from one manufacturer might be much less nutritious and sustainable than a similar option from another brand.

The study found that replacing the worst 10% of products delivers the vast majority of benefits for manufacturer’s sustainability and nutrition credentials.The authors then simulated what could happen if the brands swapped 10% of their product range. In 1% increments, they replaced these lowest-ranked products with medium-scoring products in the same category.

“Replacing the worst 10% of products delivers the vast majority of a manufacturer’s potential improvements, after which the returns diminish because the worst-scoring products have already been phased out,” says Hammond.

She highlights that manufacturers with narrower product ranges have fewer total products that they can hypothetically replace with medium-scoring products. “In other words, the more products a manufacturer has, the greater the number of items that fall below their own median standard — and therefore the more products they can improve.”

These changes can either be driven by F&B manufacturers or imposed on them by government policy, adds Clark. “Our findings show manufacturers can get a head start on this necessary transition by making small changes to their product portfolios today.”

UK food regulations

The authors say the release of their findings is timely, as the UK government faces pressure to advance legislation requiring mandatory reporting on the nutrition of UK F&B products.

“Our study demonstrates how the UK Government could monitor both sustainability and nutritional outcomes simultaneously,” says Clark. “It could also be used for Environmental, Social, and Governance reporting and to support regulatory frameworks such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.”

He also points to the UK’s Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM), which was recommended for mandatory reporting in the 2025 10-Year Health Plan for England. The NPM is currently undergoing review, and Clark notes that it may change slightly over the next few years.

According to Clark, several EU countries use Nutri-Score for nutrition reporting. He says this front-of-pack labeling was developed from the UK’s NPM and works very similarly. “Although the two systems are not identical, our framework would work just as well if Nutri-Score were ever adopted in place of the NPM.”

The findings of the study demonstrate that manufacturers can make meaningful changes to sustainability and nutrition without introducing new items to their product range.For the environment, he identifies greenhouse gas emissions and land use as two key pressures that the UK and the EU have set targets for and are actively working to reduce through various policy mechanisms.

Weighing trade-offs

Hammond notes that targeting one aspect can lead to trade-offs with the other, because ingredients can have a high environmental impact despite offering strong nutritional value (such as meat), or vice versa (such as sugar).

Therefore, she stresses that product changes must balance nutritional and environmental performance.

“In general, product changes that increase the relative proportions of fruits, vegetables, whole grain cereals, nuts, and pulses within the food product can often deliver improvements for both nutritional quality and environmental sustainability,” she notes.

“However, a caveat to this is that certain ingredients within these categories, such as specific types of nuts, still carry high environmental impact scores.”

Clark reiterates that the study demonstrates manufacturers’ capacity to reduce negative impacts on the environment and boost nutrition without needing to introduce new items into their product range.