Retail & E-Commerce

How Retailers Can Lead the Shift to Healthy, Sustainable Protein Choices

The private sector can play a vital role in advancing a societal shift toward healthier and more sustainable diets. Key to this is rebalancing plant and animal protein food sales to ensure that consumption aligns with evidence-based health recommendations and planetary boundaries.

In a call to action on the New Food Hub, ProVeg International is urging food companies to set clear targets to rebalance their protein sales. The goal is for retailers to drive positive dietary change aligned with global and EU health and sustainability goals.

By tracking progress toward protein split targets, food companies can uncover opportunities, develop and evaluate interventions, comply with regulatory expectations, and contribute significantly to a more sustainable food system.

Rebalancing protein sales

ProVeg International, partnered with WWF and the Green Protein Alliance, recommend food companies set targets to rebalance food sales that are congruent with the Planetary Health Diet. The split between plant-based and animal-based foods in this diet is around 70% plant to 30% animal when all food groups are included, and 60% plant to 40% animal when just focusing on protein-source foods including meat, eggs, fish, and legumes.

pulses and legumes
© Fotograf – stock.adobe.com

The call comes as Lidl last week became the first retailer in the UK to set a protein split target. The company is aiming to ensure that plant-based protein sales (in tonnage) accounts for 25% of its total protein sales by 2030.

Shifting preferences

Worldwide, consumer dietary preferences are shifting. Many consumers are reducing their meat consumption and moving towards more plant-centric diets. In Germany, for example, 59% of consumers report reducing their yearly meat intake. Meanwhile, in France and the UK, it’s 57% and 48%, respectively.[1] ProVeg and partners are calling on retailers to leverage these changing consumer trends to set even bolder protein split targets.

In the Netherlands, over 90% of Dutch food retailers are already tracking their protein split using ‘The Protein Tracker’ methodology, developed by the Green Protein Alliance and ProVeg Netherlands. To change the protein split from 40/60 to 60/40 in six years, these retailers must take targeted measures using Protein Tracker data.

Lidl becomes first UK retailer to set plant-based protein targets
© Lidl

To achieve its intermediate goal of 50/50 in 2025, the Dutch retailer Jumbo recently stopped running promotions on animal-based meat products. Meanwhile, Lidl Netherlands is testing the integration of meat substitutes on the meat shelf to work towards its target of 60/40 by 2030.

In the UK, nine retailers, representing over 80% of the major UK supermarkets, have adopted the ‘WWF Basket’ methodology to report on protein source food sales, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Coop, M&S, Lidl and Aldi. Major retailers in Belgium, Germany, and Austria have also adopted methodologies to track their protein split goals.

Reporting progress

Retailers are encouraged to report progress toward targets against a clear baseline and reference year, using a methodology that ensures internal comparability. At a minimum, retailers should report on protein-source food sales,[2] while best practice would include reporting and setting a target to rebalance animal and plant-based food sales across the whole product portfolio, including composite and prepared products.

Protein shift retailers
Source: ProVeg International. Split between animal and plant-based foods in the Planetary Health Diet.

Joanna Trewern, Director of Partnerships, ProVeg International, said: “Retailers play a pivotal role in ensuring that societies shift to healthy sustainable diets. Some retailers have already set clear targets to rebalance their protein sales, and we are now calling on others to set a goal aligned with the dietary recommendations outlined in the Planetary Health Diet, and ensure they have a strategy in place that will support customers in transitioning to plant-rich diets.

“Establishing a standardised approach for measuring the protein split will pave the way for a comprehensive understanding of the shift toward healthier, more sustainable food systems, which is why ProVeg International, WWF, and the Green Protein Alliance are working together to enable food companies to track sales of animal and plant-based foods and measure progress toward protein split targets.”

Read the call to action on the New Food Hub and unlock recommendations for targets and tracking. For more support on your alternative protein strategy, get in touch with ProVeg’s experts at [email protected].


[1] Evolving appetites: an in-depth look at European attitudes towards plant-based eating | Report | ProVeg Corporate

[2] Protein source foods are those found in the protein source food group in the Planetary Health Diet, and include meat, fish, eggs, legumes, nuts and seeds.

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