Supermarket top-up of Healthy Start vouchers increases fruit and vegetable purchases in low-income households

Stark, widening health and income inequalities in the United Kingdom underpin the need for increased support for low-income families to access affordable and nutritious foods. Using anonymised supermarket loyalty card transaction records, this study aimed to assess how an additional Healthy Start voucher (HSV) top-up of £2, redeemable only against fruit and vegetables (FVs), was associated with FV purchases among at-risk households. Transaction and redemption records from 150 loyalty card-holding households, living in northern England, who had engaged with the top-up scheme, were analysed to assess the potential overall population impact. Using a pre-post study design, 133 of these households' records from 2021 were compared with equivalent time periods in 2019 and 2020. Records were linked to product, customer and store data, permitting comparisons using Wilcoxon matched-pairs sign-ranked tests and relationships assessed with Spearman's Rho. These analyses demonstrated that 0.9 more portions of FV per day per household were purchased during the scheme compared to the 2019 baseline (p = 0.0017). The percentage of FV weight within total baskets also increased by 1.6 percentage points (p = 0.0242), although the proportional spend on FV did not change. During the scheme period, FV purchased was higher by 0.4 percentage points (p = 0.0012) and 1.6 percentage points (p = 0.0062) according to spend and weight, respectively, in top-up redeeming baskets compared to non-top-up redeeming baskets with at least one FV item and was associated with 5.5 more HSV 'Suggested' FV portions (p < 0.0001). The median weight of FV purchased increased from 41.83 kg in 2019 to 54.14 kg in 2021 (p = 0.0017). However, top-up vouchers were only redeemed on 9.1% of occasions where FV were purchased. In summary, this study provides novel data showing that safeguarding funds exclusively for FV can help to increase access to FV in low-income households. These results yield important insights to inform public policy aimed at levelling up health inequalities.