Eligible families have until 11.59pm tonight, Monday 9 November, to register for Sainsbury's £18 Healthy Start top-up, which offers six weekly £3 eGift cards to spend on fruit, vegetables, beans and pulses in the run-up to Christmas. Anyone who qualifies but does not register by the deadline will miss out.

Sainsbury's announced the offer on 20 October, reintroducing a Healthy Start top-up for low-income families with young children in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is the first retailer to offer this additional support since the NHS scheme moved to a prepaid card format in 2022.

Eligible customers will receive a £3 Sainsbury's eGift card by email each week for six weeks, starting on 18 November, worth up to £18 in total. The final cards will be issued by 23 December. Each card must be used within seven days of being issued for the customer to receive another one the following week, and at least £3 must be spent when using each card.

The cards can be used in participating Sainsbury's stores and online, on fresh, frozen, tinned and dried fruit, vegetables, beans and pulses. Not every product qualifies: potatoes, yams, plantain, cassava, baked beans, coconut, fruit juice, smoothies, dressed salads and products with added sugar or several non-vegetable ingredients, such as cauliflower cheese, are excluded.

To qualify, customers must hold a Healthy Start Mastercard and a Nectar card, and must have used the two cards together in the same Sainsbury's transaction between 20 October 2025 and 20 October 2026 inclusive. Registration is through Sainsbury's online form, and customers need to provide their first name, last name, email address and the last 11 digits of their Nectar card number.

Sainsbury's will use previous transaction data to confirm eligibility, because this is a trial. That means shopping at Sainsbury's now cannot make someone eligible: the qualifying shopping period has already ended. The supermarket says it knows this means some Healthy Start customers will not be able to take part, and it will use what it learns from the trial to explore how the support can be made available to more customers in future.

The top-up is separate from the regular NHS Healthy Start scheme, which supports low-income families with young children and pregnant women through a free prepaid Healthy Start card that is automatically topped up with money every four weeks. The extra £18 does not come as cash and is not added to the Healthy Start card balance; it arrives as separate eGift cards by email.

Sainsbury's first trialled a Healthy Start top-up in 2021, before the scheme moved to a prepaid card. Analysis by the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, in partnership with IGD, found that customers redeeming a top-up coupon bought an average of 13 more portions of fruit and vegetables per basket than those who did not.

Nilani Srithran, Sainsbury's head of healthy and sustainable diets, said the supermarket had seen the difference extra support can make for families on Healthy Start, and that the weekly top-up was being brought back in the run-up to Christmas, when family budgets can face additional pressures. Dame Diana Johnson, Minister of State for Public Health and Patient Safety, welcomed the move and encouraged other retailers to follow Sainsbury's lead. Anna Taylor, executive director of The Food Foundation, called the scheme a vital nutritional safety net for the most disadvantaged babies and toddlers in the country, while urging that the underlying scheme be expanded.

Families who think they may qualify should check the official Sainsbury's Healthy Start page and complete the registration form before 11.59pm tonight, making sure their details, especially their email address, are correct. Sainsbury's advises customers to check their junk or spam folder if the first eGift card does not arrive in their inbox from 18 November.