Australian food and beverage manufacturers have made little progress in improving their focus on nutrition, according to a new report.
A Deakin University scorecard has rated the nutrition policies and practices of the 21 largest packaged food and beverage manufacturers in Australia, including Nestlé, Unilever, Arnott’s, and Coca Cola.
Professor Gary Sacks, Co-Director of Deakin’s Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition (GLOBE) said food companies continued to ignore calls to stop promoting unhealthy food to children.
Professor Sacks said overall scores ranged from 23 out of 100 for beverage manufacture Refresco Australia to 65 out of 100 for diary company Fonterra.
“The average score is just 50 out of 100, up slightly from an average score of 42 out of 100 in the previous assessment five years ago,” he said.
“Unhealthy diets and obesity are among the leading contributors to poor health in Australia (and) a major driver of unhealthy diets are food environments that are dominated by the supply and marketing of unhealthy packaged foods.”
Professor Sacks said current government nutrition policies, such as implementation of the Health Star Rating labelling scheme, restrictions on marketing of unhealthy food to children, and nutrition reformulation targets for packaged foods, relied on the voluntary action of food manufacturers.
“But progress from the food industry is painfully slow, reliance on voluntary action is not working, and it’s clear that mandatory regulations are now required.”
The Inside Our Food and Beverage Manufacturers report collected information on food company policies and practices from publicly available sources including website and company sustainability reports, focusing on company policies and practices in six key areas:
- Corporate strategy.
- Product formulation.
- Nutrition labelling.
- Responsible marketing of unhealthy products and brands (especially to children).
- Accessibility and affordability of healthy foods.
- Transparency of external relationships.
Professor Sacks said the evidence collected was scored against industry benchmarks and public health best practice.
He said scores in each topic were combined to calculate an overall score out of 100 for each company, repeating an assessment that took place in 2018.
Report author and GLOBE Associate Research Fellow Jasmine Chan said the goal was to recognise good practice, highlight areas for improvement and advocate for sector-wide improvements so that food manufacturing companies could better contribute to improving population health.
“Many countries around the world have already mandated front-of-pack nutritional labels on packaged foods,” Ms Chan said.
“Governments in a range of countries, including Norway and Chile, have also put in place comprehensive laws to protect children from exposure to marketing of unhealthy food and drinks.
“In contrast, Australian kids are bombarded by up to 10 unhealthy food ads per hour when they’re online. And less than a third of packaged foods are labelled with the voluntary Health Star Rating.”
