Bremner & Co are delighted to be working with Public Health Wales and First Steps Nutrition Trust on a new project examining how supermarket and retail environments in Wales could better support healthier outcomes for babies and young children, supporting action towards a healthier, fairer future for families across Wales.
About the project
Retail spaces are where families make food and feeding decisions every day. For some, this involves navigating infant formula choices and, for many others, seeking healthy options for their toddlers. Yet the role retailers could play in supporting those decisions in line with public health recommendations remains largely untapped.
Through a focused scoping project, we’ll explore where voluntary, retailer-led changes could most meaningfully support healthier early years outcomes in Wales. Key areas of focus include how retailers present and promote formula milks and commercial baby and toddler foods; how retail environments can better support breastfeeding; and how supermarkets can make healthier choices more visible and accessible for families across the wider store. The work will produce a shortlist of feasible, retailer-owned interventions for piloting.
A strong policy context now supports this work in Wales, with the Healthy Weight, Healthy Wales Delivery Plan, CMA recommendations on the formula milk market and new voluntary baby food guidelines providing a well-grounded mandate for this work.
Supporting Wales to give every child the best start through healthier retail environments
This project will support Public Health Wales in delivering its five policy priorities for a healthier, fairer Wales, particularly ensuring every child has the best start in life, and making healthy everyday places work for everyone.
Public Health Wales’s prevention-focused approach commits to prioritising the health and wellbeing of babies, children and young people so they can thrive today and shape resilient communities tomorrow. Retail environments are part of that picture. By understanding how supermarkets can better support families’ food and feeding decisions, this project will contribute to making healthier choices the affordable, visible option for families across Wales.
This project complements wider research we are carrying out on the Welsh early years food system, whilst building on our growing portfolio of work looking at the breastfeeding and infant feeding landscape, media coverage surrounding the CMA and early years commercial baby food review.
We’re looking forward to working with Public Health Wales, retailers and partners across Wales to help create retail environments where every family can make healthy choices with confidence.