Supermarket keeping track of what customers buy to increase healthy eating

PILING up your trolley with pizza and chips? You'd better be careful - this supermarket is keeping tabs on what you buy, and they'll let you know if you're eating badly.

Buying too much junk? We?re watching

ONE OF THE UK'S biggest supermarket chains is planning to spy on the shopping habits of customers who want to slim and advise them on how to eat more healthily.

Tesco will use data from its loyalty card scheme to see who is loading up on high-calorie or fat-laden food such as doughnuts, chocolate and pizza.

Its 16 million Clubcard members could then be offered vouchers for healthier products or given recipes as part of the battle against the growing obesity epidemic. Tesco boss Philip Clarke said customers would need to 'opt in', rather than being bombarded by unwanted suggestions.

'We won't encourage healthier lifestyles by editing choices, but we can influence choice by making healthier options,' he told The Grocer magazine. The supermarket's technology experts have built an online tool - dubbed the 'healthy little differences tracker' - that will measure how customers' habits change following the health drive.

The group is also expected to contribute data to government research into obesity.

However, only anonymous data will be passed to health research organisations, unless customers volunteer their details.

Britain's biggest supermarket says 65 per cent of its customers admit their lifestyle isn't as healthy as they would like. It has already teamed up with charity Diabetes UK to research diet patterns and agreed to cut the calories in its own-brand soft drinks. Tesco has also thrown its weight behind government plans to introduce a universal label on the front of food packaging, and stepped up efforts to reduce the $1000 worth of groceries each family wastes every year.

How do you think this would go in Australia? Tell us below