How big food companies can do more to create healthier food environments
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How Big Food Companies Can Do More to Create Healthier Food Environments
The Challenge of Healthy Eating in Canada
Healthy eating is a significant challenge in Canada’s current food environment. When unhealthy, attractive foods are promoted, priced, and placed for easy access and consumption, it contributes to suboptimal eating patterns among most Canadian adults and children.
The Role of the Food Industry
The food industry has a crucial role to play in the World Health Organization’s global action plan for addressing chronic diseases. By creating healthier food environments, food companies can take actions like reducing the amount of salt, saturated fats, and sugars in foods. As the creators, distributors, and marketers of the majority of foods we consume, food companies have a significant impact on our diets.
Conflicting Interests
It is no secret that companies and their shareholders have legally mandated profit-driven interests that may not align with a desire to support public health and healthy eating among Canadians.
Assessing Food Industry Commitments
To understand more about food industry commitments, we studied the nutrition-related policies and pledges of the largest food and drink manufacturers in Canada, including companies like Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Danone. We evaluated their company policies and commitments related to nutrition in six key areas: corporate strategy, food (re)formulation, nutrition information and labeling, marketing and promotion, accessibility and availability, and transparency in relationships.
Surprising Findings
Our work showed that some companies are doing more than others. We found a range of overall company scores, with the highest score totaling 75 points out of 100, while the lowest score was 18 points.
Top Performing Company
The top performing company, Unilever, had a defined strategy to support healthier diets, public targets for the proportion of sales from healthier products, and a commitment to report on these targets. They also have a policy that restricts marketing to children under the age of 16.
Room for Improvement
Many food and beverage companies are not doing enough to positively shape diets in Canada. The median score received was 49/100, a small improvement since our last report.
Recommendations for Healthier Food Environments
If food manufacturers are to play a meaningful role in improving food environments, commitments and targets need to be specific, comprehensive, and clearly and transparently shared with Canadians. Companies also need to track and report on their progress in achieving their targets.
Recommendations
- Food manufacturers should set and publicly report on targets for the proportion of their sales that come from healthier foods.
- All food manufacturers should commit to specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) targets for the amount of sodium, sugars, and saturated fats in their products and report on their progress.
- Companies should commit to pricing healthier foods the same or lower than less healthy foods.
- Companies should pledge not to advertise unhealthy products and brands on product packaging or in settings or media where children under 18 years old may be exposed.
Conclusion
Companies can do more if they truly want to support healthier dietary patterns among adults and children in Canada. Some companies may be taking steps in the right direction, but others seem to need more incentive to act and overall progress remains slow.
FAQs
Q: What is the role of the food industry in creating healthier food environments?
A: The food industry has a crucial role to play in creating healthier food environments by reducing the amount of salt, saturated fats, and sugars in foods and promoting healthier eating patterns.
Q: What are the challenges of healthy eating in Canada?
A: Healthy eating is a significant challenge in Canada’s current food environment, where unhealthy, attractive foods are promoted, priced, and placed for easy access and consumption.
Q: What are the conflicting interests of food companies?
A: Food companies and their shareholders have legally mandated profit-driven interests that may not align with a desire to support public health and healthy eating among Canadians.
Q: How can food manufacturers create healthier food environments?
A: Food manufacturers can create healthier food environments by setting and publicly reporting on targets for healthier foods, committing to specific targets for reducing unhealthy ingredients, and pricing healthier foods the same or lower than less healthy foods.
