Sainsbury's is reintroducing its Healthy Start top-up for eligible customers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland from next month, offering an extra £3 per week towards food for six weeks. The vouchers can be spent on fruit, vegetables, beans and pulses, including fresh, frozen, tinned and dried products, both in-store and online.
How the top-up works
NHS Healthy Start is a government scheme that helps parents on a low income buy healthy foods, such as milk, fruit and vegetables, through a prepaid Healthy Start card that is automatically topped up with money every four weeks. Through the scheme, eligible parents can get £9.30 per week for children from birth until one year old, £4.65 per week for children aged between one and four years old, and £4.65 per week if more than 10 weeks pregnant.
Sainsbury's will top up this amount with an extra £3 voucher per week for a total of six weeks, giving eligible customers up to £18 of additional cash to spend on healthy food in the run-up to Christmas.
Registration and eligibility
Customers must register for the top-up by completing an online form by 11.59pm on November 9, 2026. The vouchers will then be sent to those who qualify every week via email. Eligible shoppers will receive their first £3 voucher via email on November 18, 2026, and this must be spent within seven days of receipt to receive a further £3 voucher each week. Providing customers continue to spend the voucher weekly, £3 will be issued for six weeks in total up until December 23, 2026.
To be eligible, customers must have shopped at Sainsbury's in the past 12 months using their Healthy Start Mastercard and Nectar Card in the same transaction.
Retailer's commitment
Nilani Srithran, Sainsbury's Head of Healthy & Sustainable Diets, said: "We know our customers want to get more fresh fruit, vegetables and fibre into family mealtimes. We've seen the difference extra support can make for families on Healthy Start, with our previous top-up trial helping customers buy an average of 13 more portions of fruit and veg per basket. That's why we're bringing back our £3 weekly top-up in the run-up to Christmas, when family budgets can face additional pressures. I'd encourage everyone on the Healthy Start scheme to find out more."
Sainsbury's said the move makes it the first retailer to offer Healthy Start scheme customers a top-up since the NHS transition to a prepaid card format in 2022. The supermarket chain previously trialled a top-up to Healthy Start in 2021, with analysis showing that Sainsbury's customers redeeming a top-up voucher bought 13 more portions of fruit and vegetables per basket on average compared to those that didn't.
Dame Diana Johnson, Minister of State for Public Health and Patient Safety, added: "Every child deserves the best possible start in life. That's exactly why Healthy Start matters so much to this government, helping families to put healthy food on the table. I'm delighted to see Sainsbury's bring back this additional support and I encourage other retailers to follow their lead so even more families can benefit."
The move forms part of Sainsbury's wider ambition, announced in June, to add thousands of tonnes of fibre and millions more portions of fruit and vegetables to UK diets, helping make healthier choices easier and more accessible for customers.
