Fiona Watson's presentation on the Food Foundation's work towards a UK Food-EPI exercise,10 February 2016. Audio: https://goo.gl/WMFWhp More info: http://foodfoundation.org.uk/activities/projects/

1. UK Food Policy &
Nutrition: Tracking
Progress
Strengthening accountability systems for nutrition in the UK
Foodfoundation.org.uk

2. Today’s speakers
@Food_Foundation
Lawrence Haddad
Senior Research Fellow
IFPRI
@l_haddad
Inge Kauer
Executive Director
Access to Nutrition
@ingekauer
Boyd Swinburn - Keynote
Prof. of Population,
Nutrition and Global Health
University of Auckland
@BoydSwinburn
Fiona Watson
Consultant
The Food Foundation
@Food_Foundation

3. Today’s panellists
@Food_Foundation
Lord Chris
Haskins
Andrew Opie
Director of Food and Sustainability
British Retail Consortium
@the_brc
Jo Ralling
Campaign Director
Jamie Oliver Food Foundation
@FoodRev
Guy Poppy
Chief Scientific Advisor
Food Standards Agency
@GuyPoppy1
Corinna Hawkes - Chair
Prof. of Food Policy
City University London
@CorinnaHawkes

4. www.foodfoundation.org.uk

6. What is the food environment?
The collective physical, economic, policy and sociocultural surroundings,
opportunities and conditions that influence people’s food and beverage
choices and nutritional status.

7. 1. Analyse
context
2. Collect
relevant
info.
3. Evidence
ground
policies and
actions
4. Validate
evidence
with govt
officials
5. Rate govt
policies and
actions
6. Weight,
sum &
calculate
Food-EPI
scores
7. Qualify,
comment &
recommend
8. Translate
results for
govt &
stake-
holders
Methods

8. Domains
POLICY
3. Promotion
2. Labelling 9. Governance
4. Prices
6. Retail
5. Provision
8. Leadership
INFRASTRUTURE
1. Composition
7. Trade &
Investment
12. Platforms
for Interaction
11. Funding &
Resources
10. Monitoring
& Intelligence
13. Health in All
Policies

9. 1. FOOD COMPOSITION: There are
government systems implemented to ensure
that, where practicable, processed foods
minimise the energy density and the nutrients
of concern.
1.1 Food composition targets/standards have been established
by the government for the content of unhealthy nutrients of
concern in certain foods or food groups if they are major
contributors to population intakes of these nutrients.
Good Practice Statements

10. Food Epi in the UK
•Approach of current government:
- Dependence on individual choice
- Voluntary control of the companies
- Transfer of responsibility to local authorities
RESULT =
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/

11. Katie in the UK
Minsŏ in South Korea Fatemeh in Iran
Some restrictions
on advertising
HFSS food and
drink on TV since
2008.
Advertising
Ban on soft drinks
advertised on TV
since 2004.
Restrictions on
advertising specific
categories of food
during children’s TV,
radio and internet
since 2010.

12. Katie in the UK
Daniela in Ecuador
Voluntary ‘Traffic light’
labelling on FOP lables
since 2010.
Labelling
Mandatory ‘traffic light’
labelling on packaged
food for fat, sugar and salt
since 2014.
Victoria in
Australia
Restaurant chains
required to display
calorie content of
food products on
their menu boards.

13. Katie in the UK
Crystal in Barbados
No sugar tax (yet)
Tax
Excise tax (10%) on sugary drinks
introduced in August 2015
Esztera in Hungary
Tax (varying rates) adopted in
2012 on ready-to-eat HFSS
foods

14. Katie in the UK
Frida in Denmark
School food regulations implemented.
Milk, and fruit & veg for young
children.
School
food
Fruit & veg daily for school
children introduced in 2009.
Sigrid in Estonia
Restrictions on HFSS, sweet
treats and soft drinks in schools
since 2008.

15. Brazil
Governance
• Multi-sectoral
coordination
• Personal ownership and
leadership from
President
• Strong participation from
civil society
• Private sector
engagement
Food
Standards
Agency
Dept.
of
Health
DEFRA
Food
Standards
Agency
Dept. of
Local
Communities
Treasury
HMRC
DEFRA
Local
Authorities
England

16. 1. Analyse
context
2. Collect
relevant
info.
3. Evidence
ground
policies and
actions
4. Validate
evidence
with govt
officials
5. Rate govt
policies and
actions
6. Weight,
sum &
calculate
Food-EPI
scores
7. Qualify,
comment &
recommend
8. Translate
results for
govt &
stake-
holders
Next Steps for Food Epi in the UK
We are here
• Partners?
• Devolved areas?
• Food environment or
food system?

17. 2016 GLOBAL ACCESS TO NUTRITION
INDEX
FOOD FOUNDATION
LONDON, 10 FEBRUARY 2016
#ATNI2016@ATNIndex

18. 18
Encourage improvements in companies’ policies, practices and performance to result in:
• Greater consumer access to more nutritious foods and beverages
• An environment facilitating the consumption of healthier foods and beverages
Investors
Provide context for company engagement
Media
Raise profile of industry role in malnutrition
Civil society
Facilitate effective advocacy
Policymakers
Inform regulatory and policy agenda
Academics
Stimulate research on best practices
Provide companies a tool for
benchmarking their nutrition practices
Serve as an impartial source of
information for interested
stakeholders
Stimulate
dialogue and
action
Given its size and reach, the private sector can make a significant contribution to addressing obesity and
undernutrition.
ATNI seeks
to
Tool for
accountability
What ATNF aims to achieve – our theory of change

19. The private sector can play a powerful role….
19
… and has a financial and social responsibility to act

20. 20
2016 Global Index methodology

21. 21
2016 Global Index methodology

22. 22
Overall ranking
• Unilever leads the Index, with a
score of 6.4 out of 10
• Nestlé and Danone also remain
in the top three, as in 2013
• Mars (16 to 5) &
FrieslandCampina (19 to 8) have
improved the most
• Eight have risen, six fallen, five
stayed the same, three new
entrants.

23. Overall findings
23
The world’s largest food companies must step up efforts to
address the global nutrition crisis – investors can play a key role
• Some companies have made improvements but the industry as a whole is moving too
slowly: the average score has only increased to 2.5 from 2.2 in the 2013 Index
• All companies must invest more in embedding nutrition into their global businesses
– To tackle obesity, they should adopt stronger nutrition strategies and policies and
use robust systems to measure the nutritional value of all of their products and
make their foods healthier, among other things
– To tackle undernutrition, they must invest within their businesses and work with
governments and civil society to find innovative ways of providing affordable and
accessible foods for poorer people
• Companies must take a global approach; US companies particularly must not just focus
on their home markets, as they typically do
• The marketing practices of all six of the baby food manufacturers evaluated in a new
element of the assessment fall short of international standards, undermining
breastfeeding which is the optimal form of nutrition for infants

24. 24
Category B - Products
• Unilever leads with significant margin over Nestlé
• Higher ranking than in 2013:
FrieslandCampina, Mars and Ferrero
• Lower ranking: Kellogg’s and ConAgra
• Inadequate efforts to improve products’ nutritional
quality
• Nutrient Profiling system:
only 13 companies report having one
• % of products that can be advertised to children
• Proxy for healthiness of product portfolio
• Only Danone and Unilever provided data
• Fortification of products to tackle undernutrition
• Only Ajinomoto, Danone, FrieslandCampina,
Mondelez, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Unilever
have formulated a commitment

25. 25
Category D - Marketing
• Highest-scoring Category, Danone leads.
• Marketing to all consumers
7 companies without evidence of a responsible
marketing policy
• Marketing to children
• Most companies subscribing to self-regulatory
pledges
• But significant gaps remain in pledges
• Not applied to all media
• Do not cover over 12s
• Audience threshold for children 35%
• Definition of marketability to children
• Only Kellogg, Ferrero, Danone, Nestlé
and Unilever use a robust NPS
• GLOBAL policies on responsible marketing to children
and adults, applied to all channels, particularly new
media, are required.
• No data on marketing spending on healthy products

26. Categories C, E, F and G – average scores very low
26
Category C: Accessibility and affordability
Category E: Support for healthy and
active lifestyles
• Most companies engage with nutrition
stakeholders but unclear whether and how
they use the results to improve policies and
practice
• Very little engagement on undernutrition
• Much more transparency is needed on
companies’ lobbying activities on nutrition
• Critical issue
• Lowest scoring Category on the Index,
as in 2013.
• Companies expected to do much more to
make healthy foods in developed and
developing markets more affordable and
more accessible.
• Generally a low-scoring Category
• Employee wellness programs need to be
strengthened and extended
• More focus needed on supporting
breastfeeding mothers at work
• Companies need to move to supporting
independently designed and implemented
programs to support consumers
Category F: Labelling and claims
• Back-of-pack labelling commitments
reasonably good; generally not globally
consistent and some key nutrients missed
• Lack of data from companies on extent of
policy roll-out
• Focus needs to be on useful front-of-pack
labelling and responsible use of health and
nutrition claims.
Category G: Engagement with
stakeholders and policymakers

27. 27
Discussion

28. • Strengthen the UK country profile in the Global Nutrition
Report (UK Government to make available relevant data)
• Complete the Food EPI exercise for the UK (Food
Foundation to convene a workshop of experts to assess the
UK Government’s level of implementation of policies and
infrastructure support against international best practice for
improving the healthiness of food environments)
• Conduct a Access to Nutrition Index for the UK that scores
and rates the largest Food & Beverage manufacturers (ATNI
to include the UK as a ‘Spotlight Country’).

29. www.foodfoundation.org.uk