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Raising our nutritional targets to accelerate impact on public health

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We’re working to ensure 85% of our nutrition and ice cream servings meet Unilever’s Science-based Nutrition Criteria (USNC) by 2028. The new USNC update our Highest Nutritional Standards (HNS) and use dietary intake from five key markets to demonstrate our criteria’s impact on public health.

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We’re raising targets for our nutritional portfolio by 10% to accelerate its impact on public health.

The new target is for 85% of our servings to meet Unilever’s Science-based Nutrition Criteria (USNC) by 2028.

"The criteria are an evolution of our HNS,” says Global Head of Diet & Health Standards for Nutrition and Ice Cream, Julie Willems. “USNC consist of product-specific criteria that look at the role of the product in the diet and sets thresholds for calories, sugar, salt and saturated fat.

“Using these insights, we believe we can best drive reformulation and innovation across our portfolio in Ice Cream and Nutrition. We have also introduced sugar standards for all our product categories, including savoury products, complementing those we already have in place for ice cream and beverages,” she adds.

Science-based targets developed from dietary intake data

The science-based targets developed for USNC were underpinned using data from dietary intake surveys which reflect the actual eating patterns of more than 110,000 people across five markets – UK, France, Brazil, US and China.

In all markets, the findings published in the scientific journal, Nutrients, confirm that a reduction in intake of calories, saturated fat, sugar and salt would be achieved using our criteria. Unilever evaluated a number of externally endorsed Nutrient Profile Models and concluded that Unilever’s Science-based Nutrition Criteria can have the most positive impact on public health.

Moving forward our Future Foods Commitments

Our 85% goal for servings and evolved USNC will be used to accelerate our Future Foods Commitments which include targets for plant-based sales, a reduction of salt, sugar and calories, and increased sales of healthier ‘positive nutrition’ products.

Moving forward, we look to the industry and stakeholders to work together to create an industry-wide standard Nutrient Profile Model that every company in the food industry can report to, to incentivise reformulation at scale in order to enhance the impact on public health.

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