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Benchmarking the commitments related to population nutrition and obesity prevention of major food companies in New Zealand
journal contribution
posted on 2019-06-01, 00:00 authored by A Kasture, S Vandevijvere, Ella Robinson, Gary SacksGary Sacks, Boyd SwinburnBoyd Swinburn© 2019, Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+). Objectives: To benchmark comprehensiveness, specificity and transparency of the nutrition-related commitments of major food companies in New Zealand. Methods: We applied the Business Impact Assessment on Obesity and Population Level Nutrition (BIA-Obesity). The largest 25 New Zealand companies in each of the packaged food (n = 15), non-alcoholic beverage (n = 2), supermarket (n = 2) and quick-service restaurant (n = 6) sectors were selected. Publicly available information on commitments was collected through an online search. Representatives from each company were asked to review and/or supplement the information collected. Commitments were then assessed, and recommendations made at the company and sector levels. Results: Overall scores ranged from 0 to 75% across all companies with a median score of 38%. The best-performing domain was ‘corporate nutrition strategy’ (median score = 55%), and the worst-performing domain was ‘product accessibility’ (median score = 0%). Twelve out of 25 companies fully engaged with the process. Conclusions: The comprehensiveness, specificity and transparency of company commitments varied but were low overall. In the absence of strong industry commitments, government regulations, such as restrictions on unhealthy food marketing, are urgently needed. Future assessments should incorporate performance measures.
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Journal
International journal of public healthPublisher
SpringerLocation
New York, N.Y.Publisher DOI
ISSN
1661-8556eISSN
1420-911XLanguage
engPublication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2019, Swiss School of Public HealthUsage metrics
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