Weighting by price can create a perverse incentive for companies to lower the price of less healthy products so that these products count less towards their health measure.

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(12/12)

Finally, these continuous measures should be sales weighted and these sales should be measured in kilograms. Weighting by sales in kilograms ensures we capture the impact of these products on consumption. (11/12)

With a binary measure, they are forced to select from a narrow subset of products, limiting a company's ability to make the most cost-effective health improvements. (10/12)

Reformulation costs differ by product. With continuous measures, a company can choose the products that are the most cost effective to improve for a given level of health impact. This is because improvements to health are equally rewarded regardless of how healthy the product is to start with (9/12)

So, it is clear that continuous measures are better measures of health.

These continuous measures are also better for business. (8/12)

This situation can happen when: 1) already-healthy products become less healthy but stay above the threshold, 2) unhealthy products become even worse, while 3) some products near cross from "less healthy" into "healthy" territory. (7/12)

Now, a seemingly contradictory statement - A company can improve its percentage of "healthy" products, i.e. its binary health score, without actually making their overall sales healthier. How is this possible? (6/12)

We modelled the reformulation required under binary and continuous health measures to achieve a similar impact on calories. The results? Continuous targets require smaller, realistic improvements spread across more products, while binary targets demand extreme reformulation of fewer products. (5/12)

A continuous measure, however, incentivises change across the whole portfolio, as products don't need to cross a threshold to "count" as being improved. A continuous measure recognises improvements in health regardless of how healthy the product is to begin with. (4/12)

The key issue with binary measures is that they only incentivise change in a narrow subset of products - those products that are just below the "healthy threshold". (3/12)

What are binary and continuous measures? Binary measures bin products into 2 categories, e.g. healthier and less healthy, and then report what percentage of products sold are healthy. Continuous measures instead take the average nutrition score of products sold by a company. (2/12)

It's clear that the public support government intervention to make the food environment healthier. We know the impact that poor diet has on the nation's health. We also know that there are effective, evidence based policies that can address the issue.

It is time for the government to act. (6/6)

Interestingly, this support spans the political spectrum. In our poll, voters from the Conservative, Lib Dem, Labour, and Green parties backed every single policy. Reform voters even showed net support for five out of seven policies. (5/6)

Support for these types of interventions is remarkably consistent across polls conducted by different organisations. Nearly every policy in almost every poll receives net public support. (4/6)

We also surveyed over 2,000 people to gather their opinions on a range of policies aimed at making food healthier. The findings were clear: every single policy received net public support, meaning more people supported the policies than opposed them. (3/6)

We surveyed over 5,000 people, asking about their current weight and ideal weight. 67% expressed a desire to lose weight, aiming for an average reduction of 9.2kg. (2/6)