We scored Britain's "healthy" snack brands on sustainability, and the "natural" ones came last.
We scored seven of Britain's best-known healthy snack brands, from Pip & Nut to Eat Natural. A B Corp logo or the word "natural" on the packet didn't save them.
Pip & Nut: 55. Graze: 31. Eat Natural: 31. When we published, none of Britain's wellness-aisle favourites reached the top band, and the lowest scores went to the brands you'd least expect.
The food we eat causes around a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than every car, plane and ship put together. The "healthy snack" aisle sells itself on conscience: natural, plant-based, palm-oil-free, B Corp (a stamp for companies meeting certain social and environmental standards). But good for you isn't the same as good for the planet.
We scored seven of Britain's best-known healthy snack brands from 0 to 100, using the same formula we apply to every company in the SINK database. A B Corp logo didn't guarantee a good score. Neither did the word "natural" on the packet.
The scores
Live scores, highest first:
For scale: the average in our food and drink category (non-meat brands) is 41. Compare the soft-drinks giants: Coca-Cola 33, PepsiCo 34, Red Bull 32 and Monster 32. These aren't bad companies. Even the better ones are some way off the top band.
A transparency test, not a morality test
The first surprise: none of these brands scored badly on behaviour. When we published, every one scored well on our "controversies and red flags" question. We found no significant scandals, lawsuits or exposés against any of them.
So what creates the 24-point gap between Pip & Nut and Eat Natural? One thing: how much each brand actually measures and publishes about its environmental impact, its own sites, and crucially its supply chain (the farming, ingredients, packaging and transport behind most of a food company's footprint), plus whether it has set real, checkable targets to cut it.
You can't score what a company won't show you. This is a ranking of who's willing to be measured.
What separates the top from the bottom
Real targets. Pip & Nut has set targets built to the standard of the Science Based Targets initiative, an independent body that checks whether a company's climate goals are big enough to matter. Proper Snacks has promised "net zero" by 2030, but has published no emissions figures we could locate, leaving no way to check progress. Graze has promised "carbon neutral" by 2030, but we found no interim milestones, and the latest sustainability report we could trace is from 2022. A promise with no visible plan is closer to a press release than a strategy.
Offsets aren't the same as cuts. Candy Kittens has measured its footprint (with a firm called ClimatePartner), but we couldn't find the numbers published anywhere. Its "carbon neutral" status is reached largely by buying offsets, paying for carbon savings elsewhere, like tree-planting, rather than by cutting its own emissions to zero. To be fair, it has made real changes, like reducing packaging plastic. But offset-based "carbon neutral" claims are the kind campaign groups such as the Changing Markets Foundation flag across the food industry: the label can say "neutral" while real emissions stay flat.
When a small brand is swallowed by a big one. The three lowest scorers were all bought by larger, sustainability-minded parents, and being acquired didn't appear to make them more open. Deliciously Ella, now owned by Switzerland's Hero Group, points to its parent's targets, with little standalone reporting of its own. Natural Balance Foods (Nakd, Trek) sits inside Belgium's Lotus Bakeries, which has independently validated targets, but the brand publishes no equivalent reporting of its own. And Eat Natural, owned by Ferrero, is the clearest case: we could find no public emissions data, and Ferrero's own 2024 report lists its Halstead site, where Eat Natural is made, among the locations excluded from the parent's reporting. Each time, the brand stops reporting for itself, the parent doesn't break it out, and the data simply isn't there.
The exception (sort of)
Pip & Nut (55) was the strongest when we published, and earns it: B Corp certified, science-based targets, no palm oil, real supply-chain work through Tony's Open Chain. It still didn't reach the top band, for a reason. We couldn't find published proof that its emissions are actually falling. A promise that they will isn't the same. Proof of real cuts is how a brand climbs higher, and nobody here has shown it yet.
The "natural" irony
The two brands with "natural" in the name, Eat Natural (31) and Natural Balance Foods (not public), came bottom when we published. Their ingredients aren't the problem. Of the seven, they disclose the least about their actual footprint. The label on the front of the pack and the data behind it point in opposite directions.
And that's the thread running through all seven scores. The question is whether the brand behind the snack is willing to be measured. For now, most would still rather you trusted the label.
See the full breakdowns
Every score comes with a full breakdown, question by question, with the sources behind it.
- Pip & Nut: 55/100
- Candy Kittens: 32/100
- Graze: 31/100
- Proper Snacks: 42/100
- Deliciously Ella: 26/100
- Natural Balance Foods: not public
- Eat Natural: 31/100
Think we got a score wrong? Every score is open to challenge. Find the company, pick a question, and send us your evidence. That's how SINK stays accurate.
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