How committed are food companies to health?
A new study ranking the nutrition commitments of 25 of New Zealand’s largest food companies has found large variations
with some companies leading the way, but many are not doing nearly enough to reduce the biggest cause of ill health in
New Zealand, unhealthy diets.
The study, launched today by researchers at the University of Auckland, assessed the obesity prevention and nutrition
related policies and commitments of 15 packaged food manufacturers, two beverage manufacturers, two supermarkets, and
six quick-service restaurants.
It assessed company policies and commitments across six key domains related to obesity prevention and nutrition:
corporate nutrition strategy, product formulation, product labelling, product and brand promotion, product
accessibility, and relationships with other organisations.
The research project was conducted by 5th year medical student Apurva Kasture, as part of her medical studies.
She was encouraged by the engagement of many companies in the research and that some companies are making positive
steps, but the results show that much more needs to be done.
“Some companies have taken positive steps in response to pressure from society to improve their products with Nestlé,
Fonterra, Coca-Cola, Mars and Unilever the top performers, but companies could play a much greater role. There was a
large variation in the scores from 0 to 75 out of 100 with eight companies scoring less than 20.”
Professor Boyd Swinburn, who supervised the study, said that many companies had committed to comply with the Advertising
Standards Authority’s Children and Young People’s Advertising Code but stronger action is needed to protect children
from marketing of unhealthy food.
“Companies really could go beyond the existing weak Code and include children up to the age of 18 years in marketing
policies and stop using promotions like cartoon characters and interactive games for marketing unhealthy food products
to children.”
Companies performed relatively well on product labelling with many committing to implement the Health Star Ratings and
providing nutrition information on their foods and meals online. Countdown and FoodStuffs have committed to implement
the Health Star Ratings across all their own-brand products. Unilever use a publically available nutrient-profiling
system to determine the type of nutrition or health claims that are acceptable for products to carry. Although quick
service restaurants provided nutrition information online, few provided calorie labelling on meals on-site.
Many food and beverage manufacturers and supermarkets are reformulating products to reduce levels of sodium and have
targets to reduce sugar but this is highly variable and rarely measureable. Nestlé has a target for lowering sodium,
sugar and saturated content. Frucor Suntory commits to have one in three products sold to be low or no sugar by 2030.
More companies could develop targets to reduce sodium, sugar, saturated fat, trans fat and portion sizes.
Companies had few commitments to restrict accessibility of less healthy foods and improve accessibility of healthy
foods. Recommended actions are to limit price promotions on less healthy products, make all checkouts free of junk food
and for quick-service restaurants to not provide free refills for soft drinks.
A positive step would be to see population nutrition become a priority focus within the corporate strategy and to have
specific nutrition targets and objectives as key performance indicators for senior managers. Nestlé and Fonterra are
leading the way by recognising national and international nutrition priorities. Some companies were transparent about
relationships with other organisations by publishing funding for external research and publically committing to not make
political donations, with Coca-Cola, Arnott’s and Restaurant Brands the top performers.
The report was funded by the Health Research Council and was based on publically available information (up to the end of
2017) with half the companies providing additional information. It was assessed using the BIA-Obesity tool (Business
Impact Assessment – Obesity and population nutrition) developed by INFORMAS, a global network of public health
researchers that monitors food environments worldwide, co-ordinated by the University of Auckland. The study measured
commitments and transparency but did not assess the actual performance of companies in meeting those commitments or the
overall healthiness of their product profiles. These will be the focus of future research. Tackling the unhealthy food
environment requires a comprehensive response from government, the food industry, the health sector, and the community.
Report: Committing to Health: Food company policies for healthier food environments. Company assessments and
recommendations using the Business Impact Assessment tool for obesity and nutrition (BIA-Obesity). New Zealand 2018. The
University of Auckland, Auckland 2018
Full report is available at: www.informas.org/bia-obesity/
ends