Canada’s food environment makes it hard to eat healthy. Delicious, attractive but unhealthy foods are promoted, priced and placed for easy access and consumption.
Meanwhile, companies and their shareholders have legally mandated profit-driven interests — interests that may not align with a desire to support public health and healthy eating among Canadians.
We studied the nutrition-related policies and pledges of the largest food and drink manufacturers in Canada, including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Danone.
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We wanted to understand the commitments companies have made to create healthier food environments in Canada and to see if things had improved since 2018, when our team of nutrition and public health researchers first conducted this exercise.
We used standardized methods used in other countries to evaluate the top 22 food and drink manufacturers in Canada in six key areas:
- corporate strategy;
- food (re)formulation;
- nutrition information and labelling;
- marketing and promotion;
- accessibility and availability; and
- transparency in relationships.
Scores for each of these six areas were added to generate overall scores out of 100 for each company. To make sure the evaluation was relevant, we adapted the methods so they considered current policies in Canada.
We found a range of overall company scores, with the highest totalling 75 points out of 100, while the lowest score was 18 points.
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, plus a policy that restricts marketing to children up to the age of 16.
But many food and beverage companies are not doing enough.
The median score was 49 out of 100, a small improvement since our last report. We found few commitments to make healthier foods more available and accessible. Most commitments centred on what companies said they were doing to improve nutritional quality.
We also found some important areas where none of the 22 companies had made any commitments. For instance, none had committed to decrease their spending on marketing unhealthy foods.
Company commitments related to nutrition matter. They guide companies’ current and future actions, inform shareholders and governments of corporate intentions and can be used to hold companies to account for actually meeting their stated commitments.
Based on our analysis, we have created a set of recommendations for food manufacturers.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 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.
We also suggest that companies pledge not to advertise unhealthy products and brands on product packaging or in settings or media where children younger than 18 years old may be exposed, in line with recent World Health Organization recommendations.
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.
– This article first appeared in the Conversation, by Reuters and has been edited for length.
