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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.

History

Journal

International journal of public health

Publisher

Springer

Location

New York, N.Y.

ISSN

1661-8556

eISSN

1420-911X

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2019, Swiss School of Public Health