Healthier and more sustainable diets: Our fifth annual Great Fruit and Veg Challenge

30 April 2025

Offering delicious, great quality food at competitive prices has been at the heart of what we do since our first store opened in 1869. Today, inspiring and delighting our customers with tasty, healthy and more sustainable food remains our priority.

In a world where three quarters of the food we eat comes from just 12 plants and five animals, we want to inspire customers to adopt a balanced diet, in line with the Eatwell Guide by making healthier choices easier to identify, accessible, affordable and, most of all, enjoyable and delicious.

This year, 81.9 per cent of our total sales tonnage came from Healthy and Better for you products, a one per cent increase year on year, with own brand sales at 88.3 per cent. The year-on-year increase is primarily driven by corrections of health ratings for soft drinks within our impulse category, and an increase in water and produce sales tonnage.

We outperformed the market in volume growth in multiple categories including produce, frozen fruit and veg and frozen meat-free products and saw significant growth in low and no alcohol sales.

We know that it can be difficult for customers to have the time, money, or inspiration to access the joy that good food can bring. To bring back the spark to mealtimes, we prioritise action in five key areas: awareness, affordability, incentivisation, inspiration and advocacy.

Spotlight on how we’re incentivising healthier choices

For the fifth year, our Great Fruit and Veg Challenge: Fruitful Rewards: Boost Nectar points when shopping fruit and vegetables at Sainsbury's. Sainsbury's allowed customers to collect bonus Nectar points over August and September when they chose fresh, tinned, dried or frozen fruit and vegetables. Over 133 million portions of fruit and veg were sold as part of the promotion – an increase of 20 million from last year.

To encourage customers to sustain their fruit and vegetable purchasing, we also ran a follow-up campaign offering bonus points on personalised offers and to encourage a greater diversity of fruit and veg purchases. This extended period also increased portions of fruit and vegetables purchased, especially among lower fruit and vegetable consumers, showing that we can have a positive impact through personalised offers. As a result of these initiatives our most loyal customers ranked us first.

Find out more about how how we're creating better diets for all

Discover our Plan for Better