This article is part of the the PLoS Medicine series on Big Food.
Today we launch a major new series on “Big Food” in the PLoS Medicine Magazine. Over three weeks beginning 19 June 2012 we will publish seven articles that examine the activities and influence of the food and beverage industry in the health arena. These articles were commissioned by the senior Magazine editor (JC) under the guidance of our series guest editors Marion Nestle of New York University and David Stuckler of Cambridge University, and together they represent a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the role in health of Big Food, which we define as the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power [1].
Indeed, while problems of obesity and associated disease are dominating discussions and debates in health around the world, there's a concomitant gulf of critical perspectives on the food industry's role and competing interests. Despite PLoS Medicine's longstanding interest in the tobacco, pharmaceutical, and other industries in health, for example, we have paid relatively little attention to the activities and influence of food and beverage companies: just two articles in 2007 [6],[7] and a recent editorial on the alcohol industry [8]. Searching PubMed, only an additional seven articles examining any aspect of the food industry have been published in the major general medical journals over the past 10 years.
Author Contributions
Wrote the first draft of the manuscript: JC. Contributed to the writing of the manuscript: VB JC EV. ICMJE criteria for authorship read and met: VB JC EV. Agree with manuscript results and conclusions: VB JC EV.
References
Today we launch a major new series on “Big Food” in the PLoS Medicine Magazine. Over three weeks beginning 19 June 2012 we will publish seven articles that examine the activities and influence of the food and beverage industry in the health arena. These articles were commissioned by the senior Magazine editor (JC) under the guidance of our series guest editors Marion Nestle of New York University and David Stuckler of Cambridge University, and together they represent a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the role in health of Big Food, which we define as the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power [1].
Industry in health has long fascinated PLoS Medicine
but our focus on Big Food is new. Food, unlike tobacco and drugs, is
necessary to live and is central to health and disease. And yet the big
multinational food companies control what people everywhere eat,
resulting in a stark and sick irony: one billion people on the planet
are hungry while two billion are obese or overweight [2].
The time is ripe for PLoS Medicine
to shine a light on Big Food. Foremost, large food and beverage
companies now have an undeniably influential presence on the global
health stage. Whether it's food company executives providing expertise
at major conferences and high-level UN meetings (e.g., [3]) or major global health funders lecturing on what nongovernmental organizations can learn from Coca-Cola [4],
the perspectives and experiences of Big Food are shaping the field of
global health. At the same time that their expertise is elevated in
global health debates, food companies are rebranding themselves as
“nutrition companies,” offering business acumen and knowledge in food
science and distribution, and asserting authority over solutions to
problems not just of food production but of malnutrition, obesity, and
even poverty. The legitimization of food companies as global health
experts is further fueled by the growing number of private-public
partnerships with public health organizations [5],
ostensibly designed to foster collaborative action to improve people's
health and wellbeing. And yet food companies' primary obligation is to
drive profit by selling food. Why does the global health community find
this acceptable and how do these conflicts of interest play out?
Indeed, while problems of obesity and associated disease are dominating discussions and debates in health around the world, there's a concomitant gulf of critical perspectives on the food industry's role and competing interests. Despite PLoS Medicine's longstanding interest in the tobacco, pharmaceutical, and other industries in health, for example, we have paid relatively little attention to the activities and influence of food and beverage companies: just two articles in 2007 [6],[7] and a recent editorial on the alcohol industry [8]. Searching PubMed, only an additional seven articles examining any aspect of the food industry have been published in the major general medical journals over the past 10 years.
According to Marion
Nestle, these issues have been known and discussed (though not always
acted upon) within the nutrition community for decades, which makes the
lack of attention in the medical literature even more disappointing. In
fact, Nestle's 2002 book Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health
is prescient in documenting a laundry list of Big Food misdeeds that
are only receiving more widespread attention now: aggressive lobbying of
regulators and governments, co-opting domestic and international
nutrition experts, deceptive and illegal marketing to children, tactical
targeting of minorities and emerging economies, and undisclosed
conflicts of interest, among others, resulting in her conclusion 10
years ago that the food industry “plays politics better than anyone” [9]. More recent evidence confirms that Big Food and Big Alcohol are mimicking (and learning from) the tactics of Big Tobacco [8],[10]–[13]. In recognition, a bold move by Journal of Public Health Policy discourages studies of individual eating and activity [14],[15]
because, as the editors state, they “have come to believe that research
studies concentrating on personal behavior and responsibility as causes
of the obesity epidemic do little but offer cover to an industry
seeking to downplay its own responsibility.”
The PLoS Medicine
series on Big Food is a “sampler,” offering perspectives on select
topics relevant to how the food industry operates in health. In this
first week the guest editors lay out a background and three competing
views of how public health professionals can respond [1], and Lori Dorfman and her colleagues [16]
compare soda companies' corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns
with those of the tobacco industry, demonstrating how CSR deftly shifts
responsibility for overconsumption from corporations to individuals,
forestalls regulation, and promotes brand loyalty and sales. In
subsequent weeks we will publish analyses of the rapid rise of Big Food
sales in developing countries, an essay on food sovereignty and who
holds power over food, and two perspectives from South America and
Africa on the displacement of traditional diets by the incursion of
multinational food companies. We decided not to provide a forum for the
industry to offer a perspective on their role in global health, since
this point of view has been covered many times before [17]–[20]
and fails to acknowledge their role in subverting the public health
agenda, thus ignoring the deeper issues that this series aims to
uncover.
While our series does
include perspectives from several countries around the world (including
Brazil, South Africa, the UK, and the US), our series is not as
regionally diverse as would be ideal. When commissioning we had a
difficult time finding authors in the developing world who had not
already established links with food companies (thus disqualifying them
from contributing to the series, per our Magazine competing interests
policy), which might be more evidence for concerns about co-opting of
international nutrition experts.
The series is not
comprehensive in highlighting all the relevant issues but should signal
to readers our interest in considering further original research and
commentary on additional areas to do with the food industry in health,
including marketing to children, litigation, regulatory efforts, the
impact of agriculture systems, solutions to obesity and noncommunicable
diseases, and the growth and spread of markets in emerging economies.
Clearly issues of nutrition and diet are key to human health and to the
health of the planet. We look forward to continuing to be part of the
dialogue and invite readers to join the debate via twitter (hashtag
#plosmedbigfood) and to comment on the articles, which will be published
over three weeks and collected at http://www.ploscollections.org/bigfood.
Author Contributions
Wrote the first draft of the manuscript: JC. Contributed to the writing of the manuscript: VB JC EV. ICMJE criteria for authorship read and met: VB JC EV. Agree with manuscript results and conclusions: VB JC EV.
References
- (2012) Big Food, Food Systems, and Global Health. PLoS Med 9: e1242. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001242.
- (2008) Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. Melville House. 448 p.
- (2011) Will Industry Influence Derail the UN Summit? BMJ 343: d5328. http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d5328.full.
- TEDxChange (September 2010) Melinda French Gates: What Nonprofits Can Learn from Coca-Cola. Available: http://www.ted.com/talks/melinda_french_gates_what_nonprofits_can_learn_from_coca_cola.html. Accessed 14 May 2012.
- (2011) Partnerships between Health Organizations and the Food Industry Risk Derailing Public Health Nutrition. CMAJ. 183. : 291–292. doi:10.1503/cmaj.110085.
- (2007) Relationship between Funding Source and Conclusion among Nutrition-Related Scientific Articles. PLoS Med 4: e5. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040005.
- (2007) Does Industry Sponsorship Undermine the Integrity of Nutrition Research? PLoS Med 4: e6. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040006.
- (2011) Let's Be Straight Up about the Alcohol Industry. PLoS Med 8: e1001041. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001041.
- (2002) Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- (2009) The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food? Milbank Quarterly 87: 259–294. Find this article online
- (2004) Tobacco and Obesity Epidemics: Not So Different After All? BMJ 328: 1558–1560. Find this article online
- (2008) Can the Food Industry Play a Constructive Role in the Obesity Epidemic? JAMA 300: 1808–1811. Find this article online
- (2011) The Corporate Playbook, Health, and Democracy: The Snack Food and Beverage Industry Industry's Tactics in Context. In: Stuckler D, Siegel, K, editors. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- (2011) Obesity as Collateral Damage: A Call for Papers on the Obesity Epidemic. J Public Health Policy 32: 143–145. Find this article online
- (2011) Special Issue Section: Food and Obesity Collection. Available: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jphp/collections/food_and_obesity_collection.html. Accessed 14 May 2012.
- (2012) Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns: How Do They Compare? PLoS Med 9: e1241. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001241.
- (2010) Can the Food Industry Help Tackle the Growing Burden of Undernutrition? Am J Public Health 100: 974–980. Find this article online
- (2011) Major Multinational Food and Beverage Companies and Informal Sector Contributions to Global Food Consumption: Implications for Nutrition Policy. Global Health 7(26). doi:10.1186/1744-8603-7-26.
- (2011) Nutritional Change Is Not a Simple Answer to Non-Communicable diseases. BMJ. 343. doi:10.1136/bmj.d5097.
- (2011) The Current and Future Role of the Food Industry in the Prevention and Control of Chronic Diseases: The Case of PepsiCo. In: Stuckler D, Siegel, K, editors. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Find Out More
Editorial
PLoS Medicine Series on Big Food: The Food Industry Is Ripe for Scrutiny
PLoS Medicine: Published 19 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001246
PLoS Medicine: Published 19 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001246
Essays
Big Food, Food Systems, and Global Health
PLoS Medicine: Published 19 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001242
PLoS Medicine: Published 19 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001242
Food Sovereignty: Power, Gender, and the Right to Food
PLoS Medicine:Published 26 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001223
PLoS Medicine:Published 26 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001223
Policy Forums
Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns: How Do They Compare?
PLoS Medicine:Published 19 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001241
PLoS Medicine:Published 19 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001241
Manufacturing
Epidemics: The Role of Global Producers in Increased Consumption of
Unhealthy Commodities Including Processed Foods, Alcohol, and Tobacco
PLoS Medicine:Published 26 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001235
PLoS Medicine:Published 26 Jun 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001235
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