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What they found suggests the deadlines didn\u2019t mean much at all.<\/p>\n
Voluntary targets fall short<\/p>\n
A new study from the University of Oxford<\/a> looked at the 21 highest-grossing chain restaurants in Britain. <\/p>\n The researchers asked: how many menu items actually meet the government\u2019s voluntary reduction targets? The answer was just 43 percent.<\/p>\n The figure covers 3,099 menu items pulled directly from each chain\u2019s own website in early 2024. <\/p>\n Roughly six in ten met the calorie target. Just under six in ten met the salt target. Sugar ranked the worst at 36 percent.<\/p>\n Alice O\u2019Hagan, a doctoral researcher who led the work at Oxford\u2019s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, said adherence varied widely between restaurants and food types.<\/p>\n The team pulled nutritional information directly from chain websites, working through PDF menus and online portals to log more than 3,000 individual items. <\/p>\n Each one was checked against the government\u2019s target for its food type.<\/p>\n Three separate reduction programs governed the rules. The sugar reduction<\/a> push required changes by 2020. Salt targets came due in 2024. <\/p>\n The calorie reduction program ran to 2025, extended from 2024 because of the pandemic.<\/p>\n Modeling research has long suggested these reductions could cut rates of obesity and cardiovascular disease, with one paper<\/a> estimating substantial health gains if the sugar program hit its goal.<\/p>\n Sugar fares the worst<\/p>\n Of the three nutrients, sugar was where chains performed worst. Just over a third of eligible menu items came in at or below the government\u2019s sugar limit for their category.<\/p>\n Several chains scored zero. Burger King, KFC, Nando\u2019s, and Vintage Inns had not a single eligible item meeting the sugar target.<\/p>\n Papa John\u2019s was the lowest adherer overall. Only 8% of its items met the salt target, and 35% met the calorie target. With every applicable bar layered together, just 8% of the menu cleared them all.<\/p>\n Pizza chains lag behind<\/p>\n Grouping the chains by cuisine type, pizza restaurants came out at the bottom. <\/p>\n Just 32% of pizza-restaurant menu items cleared all applicable targets, compared with 59% for burger restaurants \u2013 the highest-performing group.<\/p>\n Inside the food categories themselves, salads led the pack at 96% adherence, though salads were only eligible for the calorie target. <\/p>\n Breakfast items came second at 66%. Desserts and pizzas sat at the bottom.<\/p>\n A US study<\/a> tracking American fast-food meals from 2008 to 2017 found a similar pattern of stalled progress, suggesting this is not just a British problem.<\/p>\n Same cuisine, different results<\/p>\n Chains selling broadly similar food performed very differently. Burger King and McDonald\u2019s both have burger menus, but their adherence figures came in nowhere near each other.<\/p>\n Subway, the only sandwich chain in the top tier, had 76% of its menu items hitting all applicable targets \u2013 the highest result in the sample. Several large pizza chains, by contrast, sat in the teens.<\/p>\n Until this paper, no one had compared adherence across whole menus, by company, for all three reduction targets at once. <\/p>\n Cuisine type, the data showed, is not the constraint. It is recipe choices and portion sizes.<\/p>\n \u201cInterestingly, restaurants with similar menu styles performed quite differently in meeting the targets,\u201d said O\u2019Hagan.<\/p>\n The case for mandates<\/p>\n The Oxford team noted that voluntary targets aren\u2019t working. <\/p>\n A 2024 review<\/a> of reformulation policies across multiple countries confirmed what the UK data suggests \u2013 mandatory rules consistently outperform voluntary ones in getting industry to reduce salt, sugar, and calories.<\/p>\n \u201cVoluntary targets alone are not delivering consistent improvements in the salt, sugar or calorie content of food items on offer in UK restaurants,\u201d said study co-author Lauren Bandy.<\/p>\n The data was collected in early 2024, before salt and calorie deadlines had fully expired, so adherence may have shifted since. <\/p>\n Sales figures for individual items were also unavailable, meaning a healthier-looking menu doesn\u2019t guarantee healthier eating<\/a> in practice.<\/p>\n If customers mostly order what misses the targets, the menu\u2019s headline numbers tell an incomplete story. <\/p>\n Nutritional values also came from restaurant-reported sources, which the researchers noted can be incomplete and difficult to verify.<\/p>\n What could change next<\/p>\n The NHS 10 Year Health Plan has already proposed mandatory reporting of healthy sales from large food companies, with a path toward mandatory targets to follow. <\/p>\n If the rules go mandatory, chains missing them will face public reporting, industry comparisons, and enforcement pressure \u2013 not just a voluntary nudge.<\/p>\n Other countries show that this approach can deliver. The UK\u2019s own salt program, launched in 2004, brought average sodium levels down roughly 2% annually through 2011.<\/p>\n Those results are consistent with clear, monitored targets applied consistently across the food industry.<\/p>\n For now, the data sends a clear message. Healthier chain menus are possible \u2013 they already exist at companies that chose to build them. They simply aren\u2019t standard yet.<\/p>\n The study is published in the journal PLOS Medicine<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013
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