Food Companies Corporate Responsibility and Health

What can and should food companies do to improve the health of Australians? This is an excerpt from the presentation given by Megan Cobcroft, Corporate Nutritionist, Unilever, at the recent HEIA Conference in Sydney.

For many years, food manufacturers were primarily responsible for ensuring a safe food supply. The emergence of health concerns such as obesity along with an increased interest in health and wellbeing amongst consumers has placed additional responsibilities on food companies and has stimulated debate, particularly in regard to the advertising of food products to children.

But what should food companies do to improve the health of Australians? In 2004, the World Health Organization called for the food industry to make the "healthy choice, the easy choice" by undertaking a number of strategies. One of these was for manufacturers to improve the composition of their foods by reducing the content of salt, sugar and saturated fat.

When large food companies make even small nutritional improvements to their products, the impact on the food supply can be significant. At an individual level, this approach also ensures that the healthy choice is an easy choice by putting the onus on the manufacturer and not on the consumer.

Getting people to change their eating habits is a challenge . Ensuring that the food products people already eat are healthier is a more realistic approach. Consumer interest in health and nutrition is also increasing but taste remains the primary driver of food choice. Together, there is great pressure on the food industry to produce foods that are both healthy and taste good. A number of food companies have recognised this and have programs in place to make healthier products. Unilever has had a program in place since 2002 with the aim of assessing and enhancing the nutritional composition of its food and beverage products. All Unilever foods and beverages are assessed against benchmarks for saturated fat, trans fat, salt and sugar which have been derived from both World Health Organization and National Dietary Guidelines.

In Australia alone, more than 600 food products have been assessed, including sauces, pasta, soups and spreads, and considerable progress has been made to date to reduce these four nutrients. Saturated fat, trans fat and sugars were relatively easy to reduce. However, salt presented more of a challenge. This partly reflected the low awareness of the adverse effects of salt on health and thus the lack of interest in lower-salt foods. Nevertheless, since 2001 the salt content of more than 130 savoury products such as soups and sauces has been reduced by an average 30%. As a result, more than 45 tonnes of salt has been removed from the food supply. Further reductions are planned.

Recipe development is also a key component of the program, given that many products are used to make family meals. Unilever recipe guidelines ensure the promotion of lower saturated fat and salt ingredients and the use of more vegetables, low-fat dairy foods and lean meats. One of the strengths of the program has been the way in which all products were assessed in an objective way. In addition, collaboration between food technologists, home economists, nutritionists and marketers ensured that the mammoth task of improving the nutritional composition of hundreds of products actually occurred.

Significant reductions in salt, saturated and trans fats and sugar in the food supply will not be achieved overnight, particularly without taste being affected. However, food companies committed to reducing the levels of these nutrients in their foods and beverages in the long term will succeed in making healthier products as well as significant and sustainable improvements in the Australian food supply.