Abstract
In an article that forms part of the PLoS Medicine series on Big Food, guest editors David Stuckler and Marion Nestle lay out why more examination of the food industry is necessary, and offer three competing views on how public health professionals might engage with Big Food.
Highlights
As the PLoS Medicine series on Big Food kicks off, let’s begin this Essay with a blunt conclusion: Global food systems are not meeting the world’s dietary needs [1]
For people living in poverty, this means either exclusion from development or eating low-cost, highly processed foods lacking in nutrition and rich in sugar, salt, and saturated fats
To understand who is responsible for these nutritional failures, it is first necessary to ask: Who rules global food systems? By and large it’s ‘‘Big Food,’’ by which we refer to multinational food and beverage companies with huge and concentrated market power [7,8]
Summary
As the PLoS Medicine series on Big Food (www.ploscollections.org/bigfood) kicks off, let’s begin this Essay with a blunt conclusion: Global food systems are not meeting the world’s dietary needs [1]. For people living in poverty, this means either exclusion from development (and consequent food insecurity) or eating low-cost, highly processed foods lacking in nutrition and rich in sugar, salt, and saturated fats (and consequent overweight and obesity). Big Food is a driving force behind the global rise in consumption of sugarsweetened beverages (SSBs) and processed foods enriched in salt, sugar, and fat [13].
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