Discretionary foods and beverages are regularly consumed by Australian adults and children, and contribute to dietary risk – a leading contributor to the burden of disease. Analysing sales data allows for objective analysis of trends in discretionary foods and beverages, and can help corroborate findings from diet recall surveys. We aimed to quantify trends in sales of key discretionary foods and beverages over five years across all retail settings in Australia, and examine the proportion sold in grocery and convenience stores.
We estimated annual volume sales per-capita over five years (2012-2017 for foods and 2011-2016 for beverages) for thirteen discretionary food categories and two discretionary beverage categories using the Euromonitor Global Market Information Database and estimates of the Australian resident population. Linear regression models were used to estimate annual changes over five years. Additionally, we compared information from the Euromonitor GMID and the Nielsen Market Information Digest (MID) for grocery stores and convenience stores to estimate the proportion of discretionary foods and beverages sold in grocery and convenience stores.
We observed annual increases in the sales per capita of frozen pizza, frozen processed potatoes, potato chips, tortilla chips, ice-cream, sugar confectionary, chocolate confectionary, pastries, and sports and energy drinks, no significant change in sales of sweet biscuits, chocolate spreads, and cakes, and decreases in sales of savoury biscuits, processed meat and soft drinks. The majority of discretionary food and beverage sales occurred in grocery stores (>40%). Convenience stores accounted for a smaller share of sales (<10%), with the exception of sports and energy drinks (23%).
While discretionary food and beverage sales remain high, from a public health perspective we observed encouraging trends for select food and beverage categories. Grocery stores may be an important avenue for public health action to reduce discretionary food and beverage purchases.