This is the tweet I sent last night at 11.07pm after visiting their store at Tower Park, Poole -
I'd heard earlier in the day that Tesco have decided to pull Ribena and Capri sun off their shelves as they are full of sugar and they want to help put a stop to childhood obesity. OK, I am all for well-thought out initiatives that will go towards helping children make better choices. Education, workshops, promotional material, adverts and better labelling - all these things will help children make well-informed choices.What kind of irony is this @Tesco? Sweet-free checkouts, but it is OK to promote energy drinks??? pic.twitter.com/ncVcXwpjD5— Michelle Twin Mum (@michelletwinmum) July 29, 2015
Will removing confectionery from the till areas and replacing it with sugar-free Red Bull energy drinks help my children to buy responsibly? No, I don't think it will. So that was why I tweeted Tesco last night because to be frank I'm outraged that my kids might now think that a sugar-free Red Bull is something acceptable and healthy for them to drink. Surely that is the message Tesco are sending?
Yes, yes indeed it is, take a look at the response to my tweet that I got from Lara on the Tesco account (this tweet has since been deleted, don't you just love a good screen shot?)
I was also very interested to read David Wood, Tesco's Managing Director of Health and Wellness quoted in the Daily Mail in January 2015 saying -
"Our customers told us that removing sweets and chocolates from checkouts would help them make healthier choices, so from today our checkouts will be sweet and chocolate-free zones. We hope this will make our customer's lives easier, as taking sweets and chocolates off the checkouts will really help parents with young children. As a parent of two young children myself, I know how challenging it can be to navigate the checkouts with children in tow."Then to quote the Daily Mail -
The Retailer said it had replaced the confectionery with healthier snacks including dried fruit, nuts and cereal bars, and every food item on the checkout would be one of the "five a day", have no red traffic light ratings, be in calorie-controlled snack packs or be deemed by the Department of Health to be a "healthier snack".You see, I am indeed right to be fearful as the message Tesco want to send to us and our children is that sugar-free Red Bull, full of caffeine and aspartame is fine for us all to drink. Far healthier than traditional chocolate apparently and this is just ludicrous when Red Bull themselves advise that children should not consume their drink.
So Tesco, I'm sorry but today you lost all credibility with me. You really did prove to me that you have introduced new initiatives without thinking them through properly. Your approach is piecemeal and totally uninformed. You can not just jump on the band wagon and demonise sugar and say it is the root of all evil. There are many things to blame for our nation of obese people; sugar is just part of the problem but at least it is a natural product and we can understand it and how it effects our body. So many of these new sweeteners are having side-effects that are only just being recognised now.
Today really was an epic #TescoFail and I know a lot of people agree.
Here are a few tweets from just some of the disgruntled people who popped up in my timeline, I could literally have embedded hundreds!
@michelletwinmum @kykaree Are @Tesco the food police? Why are you telling us what to eat and drink? How about encouraging moderation?— Kate C (@kateab) July 30, 2015
@michelletwinmum @Tesco that actually disgusts me, I hadn't seen the sweets free declaration! It'll be customer free soon.— Olivia Kirby (@sayhelloflo) July 30, 2015
@michelletwinmum @Jessies_Kitchen I wud give my child a bag of sweets than a can of chemical toxins any day, Sort it out @Tesco ludicrous— Carolyn Brookland (@darlingpixiefly) July 29, 2015
@Jessies_Kitchen @Tesco @michelletwinmum I'm sure no-one's ended up in hospital by drinking too much #ribena -same can't be said for Redbull— Carrie Landeryou (@TimeToBeAnAdult) July 30, 2015
But I think my favourite tweet had to be this one -@BigFashionista @Tesco @michelletwinmum Obviously some new and funky interpretation of the word healthy that I've not previously encountered— Jax Blunt (@liveotherwise) July 30, 2015
@Tesco @michelletwinmum Tesco. You seriously need educating! This comment is Crazy!... A healthier alternative to what? Drinking Acid!— Chrissie Curtis (@MissCJC86) July 30, 2015
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