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Benchmarking the nutrition-related commitments and practices of major French food companies
BACKGROUND: This study benchmarked and quantitatively assessed the transparency, specificity and comprehensiveness of nutrition-related commitments and related practices of the major companies within the French food industry. METHODS: To evaluate the nutrition-related commitments and practices acros...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9330679/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35902838 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13780-y |
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author | Van Dam, Iris Vandevijvere, Stefanie |
author_facet | Van Dam, Iris Vandevijvere, Stefanie |
author_sort | Van Dam, Iris |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: This study benchmarked and quantitatively assessed the transparency, specificity and comprehensiveness of nutrition-related commitments and related practices of the major companies within the French food industry. METHODS: To evaluate the nutrition-related commitments and practices across policy domains such as product reformulation, labelling, marketing, and accessibility, the ‘Business Impact Assessment on Obesity and population-level nutrition’ (BIA-Obesity) was applied. A total of 33 French food companies were selected using Euromonitor 2018 market share data, including major packaged food and non-alcoholic beverage manufacturers (N = 20), quick-service restaurants (N = 7), and supermarkets (N = 6). During 2019-2020 the publicly available commitments were collected for each company, scored according to the BIA-Obesity, and company representatives were provided with the opportunity to complete and verify the collected data. The following performance metrics were included to assess company practices: the median Nutri-Score of product portfolios, the proportion of products with Nutri-Score A or B, the percentage of products (not-)permitted to be marketed to children according to the World Health Organisation Europe nutrient profile model and the proportion of ultra-processed food products as determined by the NOVA-classification. In addition supermarket flyers were collected over a 6-months period to assess the healthiness of product promotions. Correlations between commitments and performance metrics were assessed applying the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. RESULTS: Among the selected food companies, 13 companies verified and completed the publicly available data (response rate = 39%). Overall BIA-Obesity scores for company commitments varied between 2 and 74% with a median score of 28%. Scores for packaged food and non-alcoholic beverage manufacturers were higher than those for supermarkets and quick-service restaurants. The median proportion of foods with Nutri-Score A or B within product portfolios was 38% (range = 1-95%), while the median proportion of non-permitted products was 84% (range = 7-100%) and the median proportion of ultra-processed food products 63% (range = 5-100%). Stronger company commitments did not translate into better performance metrics. CONCLUSIONS: There is room for significant improvement of both company commitments and performance. Current food industry action does not meet recommended best practices. The French government is urged to regulate food industry practices to create healthier food environments. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-022-13780-y. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9330679 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93306792022-07-29 Benchmarking the nutrition-related commitments and practices of major French food companies Van Dam, Iris Vandevijvere, Stefanie BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: This study benchmarked and quantitatively assessed the transparency, specificity and comprehensiveness of nutrition-related commitments and related practices of the major companies within the French food industry. METHODS: To evaluate the nutrition-related commitments and practices across policy domains such as product reformulation, labelling, marketing, and accessibility, the ‘Business Impact Assessment on Obesity and population-level nutrition’ (BIA-Obesity) was applied. A total of 33 French food companies were selected using Euromonitor 2018 market share data, including major packaged food and non-alcoholic beverage manufacturers (N = 20), quick-service restaurants (N = 7), and supermarkets (N = 6). During 2019-2020 the publicly available commitments were collected for each company, scored according to the BIA-Obesity, and company representatives were provided with the opportunity to complete and verify the collected data. The following performance metrics were included to assess company practices: the median Nutri-Score of product portfolios, the proportion of products with Nutri-Score A or B, the percentage of products (not-)permitted to be marketed to children according to the World Health Organisation Europe nutrient profile model and the proportion of ultra-processed food products as determined by the NOVA-classification. In addition supermarket flyers were collected over a 6-months period to assess the healthiness of product promotions. Correlations between commitments and performance metrics were assessed applying the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. RESULTS: Among the selected food companies, 13 companies verified and completed the publicly available data (response rate = 39%). Overall BIA-Obesity scores for company commitments varied between 2 and 74% with a median score of 28%. Scores for packaged food and non-alcoholic beverage manufacturers were higher than those for supermarkets and quick-service restaurants. The median proportion of foods with Nutri-Score A or B within product portfolios was 38% (range = 1-95%), while the median proportion of non-permitted products was 84% (range = 7-100%) and the median proportion of ultra-processed food products 63% (range = 5-100%). Stronger company commitments did not translate into better performance metrics. CONCLUSIONS: There is room for significant improvement of both company commitments and performance. Current food industry action does not meet recommended best practices. The French government is urged to regulate food industry practices to create healthier food environments. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-022-13780-y. BioMed Central 2022-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9330679/ /pubmed/35902838 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13780-y Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Van Dam, Iris Vandevijvere, Stefanie Benchmarking the nutrition-related commitments and practices of major French food companies |
title | Benchmarking the nutrition-related commitments and practices of major French food companies |
title_full | Benchmarking the nutrition-related commitments and practices of major French food companies |
title_fullStr | Benchmarking the nutrition-related commitments and practices of major French food companies |
title_full_unstemmed | Benchmarking the nutrition-related commitments and practices of major French food companies |
title_short | Benchmarking the nutrition-related commitments and practices of major French food companies |
title_sort | benchmarking the nutrition-related commitments and practices of major french food companies |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9330679/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35902838 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13780-y |
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