What was claimed
The government will enforce healthy shopping habits by fining people whose loyalty cards or digital receipts show they buy too much unhealthy food.
Our verdict
False. The government has announced no such policy.
The government is not going to track people’s shopping and fine them for buying unhealthy food
A series of Facebook videos viewed tens of thousands of times are falsely claiming that the government is about to begin monitoring people’s diet through their supermarket loyalty cards or digital receipts. We’ve seen similar videos on TikTok too.
One Facebook video, which carries a “Generated By AI” warning, but which has evidently been believed by a number of people in the comments, is presented like a TV news report, with a voiceover that mimics the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer.
In it, the voice says: “They’re coming for your shopping basket. Starting December 2025, every supermarket in Britain will link loyalty cards to a national health database. Yes, your groceries will now decide your health score. If you buy too many sugary drinks, crisps, or fatty foods, your basket could trigger a red alert. Repeat that offence within a month and you'll face a £120 fine under the new healthy basket bill.”
But this is false. The government has made no such announcement, and there is no “healthy basket bill”. The British Retail Consortium, a trade association which counts most of the UK’s largest supermarkets as members, also confirmed with Full Fact that the information in this video is not true.
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The video is clearly very unlikely to be the Prime Minister’s real words, since the voice criticises its own policy while announcing it, saying at one point, “The line between health policy and personal control just got thinner… Today it's your biscuits and chocolate. Tomorrow it could be your spending, your habits, even your freedom of choice.”
While it may seem obvious to many people that this is fake, it may not be to everyone, particularly more casual internet users. We’ve written more about why we fact check claims like this on our blog.
We’ve seen a lot of posts announcing nonexistent government policies designed to curb personal freedoms recently. We wrote about this phenomenon in more detail in September.
We’ve also encountered misinformation about supermarket shopping before. In August, we fact checked several false videos, which claimed that the government was about to restrict the number of grocery items people could buy. And in September, we fact checked a false claim that people would not be allowed to enter supermarkets without a government-issued ID card.
Before sharing videos like this on social media, first consider whether they come from a trustworthy and verifiable source. Our Full Fact toolkit can help you do this.