Supermarket receipts could introduce graphics showing nutritional information to help solve the "obesity epidemic", proposes UK designer Hayden Peek.

Peek suggests using a similar system to the coloured tabs found on some food packaging. The nutritional data would be tallied up and transferred onto receipts to give shoppers an overview of how healthy their basket or trolley is.

"Health or diet awareness needs to become a part of everyday life, and so I targeted an everyday object on which to help people understand their diet – the supermarket receipt," Peek said.

Five tabs on the bottom of the paper receipt would give information about calories, sugar, fat, saturated fat and salt.

Rather than displaying numerical values, each would simply explain whether the total shop is low, medium or high, and use traffic-light colours as bold indicators.

"With this information, the complexity of the issue is dismantled and in one simple graphic anybody can get a good idea of how healthy their diet is," said Peek.

Obesity is increasing worldwide, and Peek believes that designers like himself have a responsibility to help tackle the issue.

"The World Health Organisation predicts that 74 per cent of men and 64 per cent of women in the UK will be overweight or obese by 2030," he said. "Design can save the world. I firmly believe that. We can't help but be shaped by the information, objects and spaces we encounter and interact with."

"It's with this belief that I set about trying to solve the obesity epidemic," Peek added.

The designer's aim is for major British supermarkets to adopt his proposal. His graphics could be paired with apps to help customers learn about how to improve their eating habits.

"The supermarket could facilitate these changes with a set of digital tools and resources that help customer's choose a healthier diet," Peek said.

"To have a real impact, Tesco's, ASDA, Sainsbury's, Co-op, Waitrose, Lidl, Aldi or M&S would have to introduce it," he continued. "The government could make it law, but that seems unlikely considering all the bullsh*t around the sugar tax proposals."

Previously, designers Antrepo created conceptual packaging for well-known supermarket products by stripping back the existing graphics in stages, then asked consumers which they preferred.