Abstract
Background: The potential role of the food and beverage industry in addressing diet-related disease is much debated, particularly amidst evidence of the targeted strategies, including voluntary self-regulation, used by the industry to influence policy in their favour. At the same time, the need for more comprehensive action to address unhealthy diets has led to a focus on increasing the accountability of different stakeholders. However, there has been limited evaluation of the impact of accountability initiatives on food and beverage company policies and practices. This study evaluated the impact of the BIA-Obesity (Business Impact Assessment – Obesity and population nutrition) Australia Initiative that benchmarked major Australian food and beverage companies on their nutrition-related policies. Methods: Evaluation was conducted against the pre-specified logic model for BIA-Obesity and established frameworks for analysing organisational change and corporate political activity. Outcomes evaluated included company engagement with the Initiative, level of media coverage, and impact of the Initiative on company policies and practices based on the perspectives of company representatives. A mixed methods design was employed, including surveys and in-depth interviews with company representatives, and media reports. Results: Approximately half of invited companies participated in the evaluation of the BIA-Obesity Australia Initiative. A number of company representatives indicated that the Initiative had influenced their company’s nutrition policies, strategies, and disclosure practices, and had raised their company’s awareness of the importance of addressing nutrition issues. Conclusion: Company representatives perceive benchmarking and accountability initiatives as helpful for provoking improvements in nutrition-related policies and practices in their companies. However, the benefits of these initiatives need to be assessed in the context of the broader political and economic environment. Whilst the focus of accountability initiatives, such as BIA-Obesity, are on industry self-regulation efforts, they can also play an important role in drawing attention to the need for increased government regulation.
Highlights
There is wide-spread recognition that a comprehensive societal approach is needed to address unhealthy diets and obesity.[1,2] This comprehensive approach needs to include actions from government, industry and other stakeholders to create healthier food environments.[3]
The BIA-Obesity Australia Initiative generated extensive visibility of nutrition issues and the role of the food and beverage industry in addressing these issues, both in the media and internally within companies. The findings from this evaluation indicate that the BIA-Obesity Australia Initiative resulted in some positive changes to internal food and beverage company policies, commitments, and disclosure practices related to obesity prevention and population nutrition, and helped to raise the priority and level of resources given to nutritionrelated issues within companies, the impact of the Initiative varied across companies
In light of slow progress to address unhealthy diets and obesity, benchmarking and accountability initiatives are one mechanism to motivate change and encourage meaningful action from the food and beverage industry towards improving the healthiness of food environments. The findings from this evaluation indicate that engagement with food companies through a benchmarking and accountability initiative can lead to changes in nutrition-related policies, resourcing and disclosure practices, as reported by company representatives
Summary
There is wide-spread recognition that a comprehensive societal approach is needed to address unhealthy diets and obesity.[1,2] This comprehensive approach needs to include actions from government, industry and other stakeholders to create healthier food environments.[3] there have been few governments, including those in Australia, that have taken meaningful action to address unhealthy food environments, and progress has been slow to date.[2,4,5] With respect to the food industry, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations have identified specific roles and actions that food and beverage companies can take to contribute to improving the healthiness of food environments.[6,7] These include reducing the exposure of children to marketing of unhealthy foods, product reformulation and improved nutrition labelling.[7] the potential role of the food industry in efforts to address diet-related disease is much debated,[8,9] amidst evidence that large food and beverage companies use a widerange of strategies to influence policy and public opinion in their favour.[10,11] Among these strategies, ‘policy substitution’ (whereby food and beverage companies develop voluntary policies and codes as an alternative to regulatory action) and ‘constituency building’ (in which companies strategically develop relationships with influential stakeholders) have been identified as key tactics used by companies in efforts to prevent or delay implementation of regulations that may negatively affect their profitability.[10,12,13]
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