1st October 2026
If you go shopping in Scotland today, 1 October 2026, some things in the supermarket may look slightly different.
Certain sweets may no longer be sitting at the checkout and crisps and other snacks may disappear from aisle-end displays. Some familiar multibuy offers may have vanished. And the same changes will increasingly appear on supermarket websites and apps.
But there is one important point to make at the beginning.
Scotland is not banning these foods.
You can still buy sweets, chocolate, crisps, cakes, biscuits, ice cream and sugary drinks.
What is changing is the way certain foods can be promoted and displayed.
The new rules, formally known as the Food (Promotion and Placement) (Scotland) Regulations 2025, come into force today. The Scottish Government says their purpose is to make healthier choices easier and reduce impulse purchases of foods high in fat, sugar or salt.
For shoppers, however, the first question is a much simpler one.
What will actually change?
The checkout is changing
One of the most visible changes is likely to be around checkouts.
In larger stores, specified foods classified as “less healthy” cannot be displayed within two metres of a checkout facility. The restriction also covers designated queuing areas.
That means the familiar last-minute choice of grabbing a chocolate bar, packet of sweets or other restricted product while waiting to pay is being deliberately reduced. The rules also cover self-service checkout areas.
The same principle applies to entrances and other prominent locations.
In stores covered by the placement rules, specified foods cannot be positioned prominently at entrances or at the ends of aisles.
The intention is fairly clear.
The Government believes that where shoppers see a product prominently displayed, they are more likely to buy it, including when it was not on their original shopping list.
So the new rules are aimed less at what people are allowed to eat and more at what retailers are allowed to put in front of them.
The familiar multibuy offer is also affected
Perhaps the change that will attract most attention from shoppers is the restriction on certain volume-price promotions.
Businesses covered by the regulations cannot offer specified products as multibuys where the customer receives a financial incentive for buying more than one.
That includes offers such as “3 for the price of 2”, “3 for £10”, “buy 6 and save 25%” and “buy one get one free”.
Offers describing an item or part of an item as free are covered as well, including “50% extra free”.
That does not mean every price reduction on these products is prohibited.
A supermarket can still reduce the price of an individual product. What the regulations target is the particular technique of encouraging people to buy more by making the additional quantity cheaper.
This is an important distinction at a time when many households are already extremely conscious of supermarket prices.
A multibuy can encourage people to buy more than they intended, which is part of the health argument.
But from a household-budget point of view, a multibuy can sometimes also be a way of reducing the cost per item.
That creates an interesting tension between public-health policy and household economics.
The rules apply online too
The supermarket isn't necessarily an escape route for retailers or customers who shop from home.
The restrictions apply to online sales as well as physical shops.
The Government's guidance specifically prevents specified less-healthy foods from being given certain prominent online positions, including promotional locations that consumers encounter while shopping. Restrictions can apply around checkout pages and other prominent online displays.
So the supermarket of 2026 is beginning to have a different concept of what counts as a promotional space.
It is no longer simply the aisle-end freezer or the shelf by the till.
It can also be the supermarket homepage, pop-up promotion or another digital position designed to encourage an additional purchase.
But what exactly is an “unhealthy” food?
This is where the legislation becomes considerably more complicated.
The Government does not simply publish a list headed “bad foods”.
A product is within scope only if it is prepacked, falls within one of the food categories specified in the regulations and is then assessed as “less healthy” using a nutrient-profiling model.
The categories include foods such as confectionery, cakes, sweet biscuits, many breakfast cereals and cereal bars, ice cream, pastries, desserts and puddings, sweetened yoghurts, savoury snacks, certain pizzas and ready meals, some potato products and soft drinks with added sugar.
This means that two apparently similar products can be treated differently.
One may fall within the rules.
Another may not.
It depends on the category, whether the product is prepacked and its nutritional composition under the profiling system.
So the phrase “unhealthy food” is really shorthand for a much more technical legal definition.
A packet of crisps isn't being declared unsafe
This distinction matters.
A packet of crisps that is no longer allowed to sit beside a supermarket checkout has not been declared unsafe to eat.
The Scottish Government is not saying the product is poisonous or dangerous in the way that a food subject to a contamination or allergen recall might be.
The policy is about diet and public health, particularly reducing excess consumption of foods high in fat, sugar or salt.
Food Standards Scotland continues to deal separately with actual food-safety risks such as contamination, undeclared allergens and other hazards.
So consumers should not confuse the two systems.
A food can be perfectly legal and safe to eat while still being covered by the new promotion rules.
Your local shop may not be affected in the same way
This is another important point, particularly for smaller communities.
The restrictions apply to qualifying businesses with 50 or more employees, although there are exemptions.
The physical-store placement restrictions have another threshold: they generally apply to stores with at least 185.8 square metres, or 2,000 square feet, of relevant selling area.
This means that not every little shop in a Scottish town will suddenly be reorganised because of today's regulations.
A large supermarket and a small independent convenience store are not necessarily treated in the same way.
That could be particularly relevant in places such as Caithness, where smaller independent retailers remain important to local communities.
What about meal deals?
There is another useful piece of information for shoppers.
The Scottish Government says meal deals are not affected by these regulations, nor are alcohol promotions.
That may surprise people who assumed that the restrictions would simply eliminate every kind of supermarket promotion involving less healthy food.
They do not.
The legislation is targeted much more specifically at certain products, promotion mechanisms and locations.
Why has Scotland introduced the rules?
The Scottish Government's wider objective is to improve diet and reduce obesity.
Its argument is that supermarkets and food retailers do not operate in a neutral environment. Where products are placed and how they are promoted can influence what people buy.
The Government says research shows that special offers and prominent displays can encourage people to buy food and drink they had not planned to purchase or to buy more than they intended.
The theory behind today's changes is therefore that if some of those prompts are removed, people may make different choices.
Whether the effect will be large enough to make a measurable difference to Scotland's health is something that will need to be assessed over time.
But there is a cost-of-living question too
The timing is interesting.
These rules arrive while households are already worried about the cost of food.
Food prices are considerably higher than they were before the pandemic, even though the current annual rate of food inflation is much lower than during the worst part of the cost-of-living crisis.
For some families, multibuy promotions are not simply a temptation.
They can be a budgeting tool.
A family buying a large packet of nappies, several tins of food, breakfast cereals or other household essentials may deliberately look for offers that reduce the price per item.
The new rules do not prevent all discounts, but they do remove certain forms of volume promotion for specified foods.
That means consumers may have to adjust the way they shop.
The Government's argument is that buying less of highly processed or nutritionally poorer food can be beneficial both for health and potentially for household budgets.
But that outcome is not guaranteed.
A shopper could simply buy the same product at full price rather than buy it on a multibuy.
Or they could switch to another product.
Or they could buy more of an alternative that remains on promotion.
This is why the actual effect will be interesting to watch.
Supermarkets are going to have to rethink their displays
For retailers, today's change is much more than moving a few chocolate bars.
The Government guidance runs to more than 60 pages because the rules cover detailed questions about product categories, nutrient profiling, store entrances, aisle ends, checkout areas, queues, freezers, online shopping and promotional packaging.
Retailers have to identify which of their products fall within the rules and then make sure they are not promoted in prohibited ways.
There are also detailed differences between Scotland's rules and the equivalent arrangements in England and Wales.
In Scotland, for example, aisle-end restrictions apply to all aisle ends, rather than only certain aisle ends associated with main customer routes. There are also particular rules concerning promotions printed on packaging.
This may explain why some supermarket layouts appear to have changed quite substantially.
Who is going to police the rules?
This isn't simply a voluntary supermarket code.
Local authorities are responsible for enforcement, using powers under food legislation.
A business that fails to comply can receive a compliance notice.
Non-compliance is an offence and can result in a criminal penalty of up to £2,500 on summary conviction. Failure to comply with a compliance notice can attract a higher fine of up to £5,000.
So while shoppers may simply notice that the sweets have disappeared from the checkout, there is a formal enforcement system behind the change.
Will it actually change what people eat?
That is the big question.
There is a logical argument that reducing impulse purchases should reduce the amount of high-calorie food bought.
But changing the supermarket environment is not the same thing as changing people's diets.
People make food choices for many reasons.
Price matters.
Taste matters.
Habit matters.
Family preferences matter.
Time matters.
Advertising matters.
And for many households, food has an important social and emotional role as well.
The regulations are therefore one part of a much broader attempt to influence diet.
The Scottish Government is hoping that making less healthy foods less prominent will gradually change purchasing habits.
The results will need to be measured rather than assumed.
What will shoppers notice today?
For the average shopper, the most visible change may be quite simple.
The chocolate bar that used to sit beside the checkout may no longer be there.
The giant display of crisps at the end of the aisle may have disappeared.
The “3 for £10” offer may no longer be available on a product covered by the regulations.
The supermarket website may feature different products more prominently.
But the same packet of biscuits may still be sitting on a shelf somewhere further inside the store.
The product hasn't been banned.
The Government hasn't declared it unsafe.
It has simply decided that retailers should not make it quite so difficult for shoppers to walk past without seeing it.
And there is a wider question
The new rules represent an interesting change in the relationship between government, supermarkets and consumers.
For years, supermarkets have become extraordinarily sophisticated at encouraging shoppers to spend more.
Products are placed at strategic points.
Promotions encourage larger purchases.
End-of-aisle displays catch the eye.
Checkout displays encourage last-minute decisions.
Online systems suggest products based on previous purchases.
Today's regulations are an attempt to put some limits on that commercial machinery where the Government believes it contributes to unhealthy eating.
Whether that is effective remains to be seen.
But one thing is certain.
Scotland has not banned the chocolate bar, the packet of crisps or the cake.
It has simply changed the rules about how prominently some of them can be sold.
And for shoppers in Caithness and across Scotland, that may be the biggest thing to remember when the supermarket looks a little different today.
**The food hasn't disappeared.
The promotion has.**