characters and interactive games for marketing
unhealthy food products to children.”
Countdown and FoodStuffs have committed
to implement the Health Star Ratings across
all their own-brand products, Swinburn says.
Unilever uses a publicly 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. 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, Swinburn says.
“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.
Swinburn says Nestle and Fonterra are leading
the way by recognising national and international
nutrition policies.
Fonterra’s head of nutrition Mandy Wigzell is
proud of the company’s commitments, and its
strong performance in corporate nutrition strategy.
“As a global dairy nutrition company, we’re
committed to sharing the goodness of dairy
and are always looking for ways to continually
improve the nutritional value of our products,”
she says. “Our new global nutrition guidelines,
which have been independently reviewed and
endorsed by the NZ Nutrition Foundation, drive
that improvement.”
It’s the same at Sanitarium Health & Wellbeing. A
statement from the company says the report will
encourage the country’s major food companies
to do more to address rates of overweight and
obese people in the New Zealand population.
“Our commitment to helping New Zealanders
20 MAY 2018
enjoy a happier, healthier life is at the core of our
company purpose, it’s why we exist. We believe
good nutrition is integral to this; we also acknowledge
it’s only one part of the solution. We
are considering the recommendations proposed
by the University of Auckland as well as the
overall assessment framework. This will help us
refine and prioritise our actions in contributing
to better population health outcomes into the
future.”
Some companies were transparent about relationships
with other organisations by publishing
funding for external research and publicly
committing to not make political donations,
with Coca-Cola, Arnott’s and Restaurant Brands
the top performers. The study also noted as
good practice Fonterra’s engagement with the
KickStart Breakfast Programme, which provides
nutritious breakfasts to children in more than 800
schools around the country; and the Fonterra
Milk for Schools initiative, which provides free
milk to participating primary schools. “These are
all part of our commitment towards the health
and wellbeing of New Zealanders,” Wigzell says.
The report was funded by the Health Research
Council and was based on publicly 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,
Swinburn says.
There are four main strategies to come
out of the study:
Corporate Population
Nutrition Strategy
Prioritise population nutrition as part of
the overall corporate strategy, including
relevant objectives, targets, appropriate
resourcing and regular reporting against
objectives and targets
Link the Key Performance Indicators
of senior managers to nutrition targets in
the corporate strategy.
Product Formulation
Commit to SMART (specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant, time-bound) targets
on sodium, sugar, saturated fat and trans
fat reduction across the product portfolio;
Use the Health Star Rating system to
guide efforts on product development
and reformulation.
Product Labelling
Support the implementation of regulations
by Government on added sugar
labelling on food products; Commit to
labelling products with nutrition claims
only when products are healthy (ie meet
the FSANZ Nutrient Profiling Scoring
Criterion (NPSC)).
Product and
Brand Promotion
Develop a marketing policy that applies
to children up to the age of 18 years;
Eliminate the use of promotion techniques
(eg. cartoon characters, interactive
games) with strong appeal to
children on ‘unhealthy’ food products.
Product Accessibility
Support evidence-informed government
policies such as a tax on sugar-sweetened
beverages;
Make a commitment to increase the
proportion of healthy food products in
the overall company portfolio.
Relationships with other Organisations
Publish all national relationships and
funding for external research on the
Zealand website;
Disclose all political donations in real
time, or commit to not making political
donations.
The full report is available at: www.informas.
org/bia-obesity/.
Tackling the unhealthy food environment
requires a comprehensive response from
government, the food industry, the health
sector, and the community