The capital rolls out a healthier shopping experience across supermarkets
If you’ve recently been through the checkout at your local supermarket and wondered where all the chocolate bars, sweets and fizzy drinks have gone, you’re not imagining things.
Abu Dhabi is giving supermarket shopping a healthy makeover, with retailers beginning to remove junk food from the places where we’re most likely to make those “I’ll just grab one” purchases.
Under the Abu Dhabi Healthy Living Programme, unhealthy food and drinks are being cleared from what experts call “temptation zones” – the store entrance, the ends of aisles and, perhaps most importantly, the checkout counters.
You know the feeling. You’ve done your weekly shop, you’re standing in line, and suddenly that chocolate bar or packet of sweets seems like a brilliant idea.
It’s the same story when you walk through the entrance and are greeted by stacks of crisps, soft drinks and “special offer” snack bundles before you’ve even picked up a basket.
Those displays are now starting to disappear.
It’s not just about removing unhealthy products, either. Abu Dhabi is also making it easier to identify healthier choices through the Nutri-Mark system, which grades packaged food from A (the healthiest) to E (the least healthy).
Rather than turning every supermarket trip into a nutrition lesson, the labels offer a quick, at-a-glance way to compare products before they end up in your basket.
For products that haven’t yet been graded, shoppers can also use the TAMM app to check nutritional information and make more informed choices.
The initiative is part of Abu Dhabi’s much bigger push to improve public health, alongside measures including tighter nutritional standards for school meals and restrictions on fast-food advertising.
What’s clever about the approach is that it doesn’t stop anyone buying chocolate, crisps or sugary drinks if they want them. They’re still on the shelves.
They’re just no longer front and centre, waiting to catch your eye every time you walk into the store or queue to pay.
Sometimes healthier habits don’t start with more willpower. Sometimes they start with making temptation a little harder to reach.
And if it means fewer impulse buys, fewer checkout negotiations and maybe even a slightly smaller grocery bill, that’s a change plenty of shoppers are likely to welcome.
