Sainsbury’s has become the first UK supermarket to reintroduce a £3 weekly top-up for shoppers on the NHS Healthy Start scheme, offering eligible low-income families up to £18 extra to spend on healthy food in the run-up to Christmas.
The offer will run for six weeks from November 18, with eligible customers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receiving a £3 eGift card by email each week.
It can be used in store or online on fresh, frozen, tinned and dried fruit and vegetables, as well as beans and pulses.
Who can apply
The top-up is aimed at families already enrolled in the NHS Healthy Start scheme, which supports low-income households with young children by providing a prepaid card topped up every four weeks.
To qualify for Sainsbury’s extra support, shoppers must have used both their Healthy Start Mastercard and Nectar card in the same Sainsbury’s transaction within the past 12 months.
How to claim
Eligible customers must register through Sainsbury’s Healthy Start portal by 11.59pm on November 9, 2026. The first £3 eGift cards will be emailed from November 18.
Each voucher must be spent within seven days of being issued, so families will not be able to save all six cards for one larger Christmas shop.
Why Sainsbury’s is bringing back the Healthy Start top-up
Sainsbury’s first trialled a Healthy Start top-up in 2021, before the government scheme moved to digital prepaid cards in 2022. Research by the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics and IGD found that customers who redeemed a top-up bought an average of 13 more portions of fruit and vegetables per basket.
Nilani Srithran, Sainsbury’s head of healthy and sustainable diets, said the supermarket was bringing back the support ahead of Christmas, “when family budgets can face additional pressures.”
