Big Food

Critical perspectives on the global growth of the food and beverage industry

Simon Williams, Marion Nestle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138945944
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317369097
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Public Health, Administration & Care

Obesity is a global public health problem of crucial importance. Obesity rates remain high in high-income countries and are rapidly increasing in low- and middle- income countries. Concurrently, the global consumption of unhealthy products, such as soft drinks and processed foods, continues to rise. The ongoing expansion of multinational food and beverage companies, or 'Big Food', is a key factor behind these trends.

This collection provides critical insight into the global expansion of 'Big Food', including its incursion into low-and-middle income countries. It examines the changing dynamics of the global food supply, and discusses how low-income countries can alter the 'Big Food'-diet from the bottom-up. It examines a number of issues related to 'Big Food' marketing strategies, including the way in which they advertise to youths and the rural poor. These issues are discussed in terms of their public health implications, and their relation to public health activities, for example 'soda taxes', and the promotion of nutritionally-healthier products. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Public Health.

The transitional dynamics of caloric ecosystems: changes in the food supply around the world

Sanjay Basu^a,b,c

^aPrevention Research Center, Centers for Health Policy, Primary Care and Outcomes Research, and Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; ^bDepartment of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK; ^cStanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

Changes to the global food supply have been characterized by greater availability of edible oils, sweeteners, and meats – a profound ‘nutrition transition’ associated with rising obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Through an analysis of three longitudinal databases of food supply, sales, and economics across the period 1961–2010, we observed that the change in global food supply has been characterized by a dramatic rise in pig meat consumption in China and poultry consumption in North America. These changes have not been experienced by all rapidly developing countries, and are not well explained by changes in income. The changes in food supply include divergence among otherwise similar neighboring countries, suggesting that the changes in food supply are not an inevitable result of economic development. Furthermore, we observed that the nutrition transition does not merely involve an adoption of ‘Western’ diets universally, but can also include an increase in the supply of edible oils that are uncommon in Western countries. Much of the increase in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages and packaged foods is attributable to a handful of multinational corporations, but typically from products distributed through domestic production systems rather than foreign importation. While North America and Latin America continued to have high sugar-sweetened beverage and packaged food sales in recent years, Eastern Europe and the Middle East have become emerging markets for these products. These findings suggest further study of natural experiments to identify which policies may mitigate nutritional risk factors for chronic disease in the context of economic development.

Introduction

Changes to the global food supply have been characterized by a dramatic shift in foods available for human consumption, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (Drewnowski & Popkin, 1997). The changes in food supply include greater availability of edible oils, caloric sweeteners, and animal source foods. These changes, collectively called the ‘nutrition transition’, have been statistically associated with rising obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease worldwide (Basu, Stuckler, McKee, & Galea, 2012; Basu, Yoffe, Hills, & Lustig, 2013; Popkin, 2001; Reddy & Yusuf, 1998; Yusuf, Reddy, Ôunpuu, & Anand, 2001).

Changes to the food supply have sparked increasing public concern about the nutrient quality of food availability around the world, the underlying factors such as trade agreements that are believed to be driving the nutrition transition in rapidly developing countries, and the role of ‘Big Food’ companies who manufacture and widely distribute processed foods associated with disease (Stuckler, McKee, Ebrahim, & Basu, 2012). Three key questions about the food supply are emerging in the setting of debates about how to best address the nutrition transition and Big Food companies. First, to what extent has the nutrition transition – described decades ago (Popkin, 1994) – continued, accelerated, or been mitigated among low- and middle-income countries in more recent years? The transition has been hypothesized to be accelerating in countries like India and China, where increasing consumption of Western-type diets is thought to be occurring in the context of rapid economic growth (Yang et al., 2010). Second, have all rapidly developing countries undergone the same transition or is the transition different among similar countries? If similar countries are undergoing different transitions – for example, if healthier foods are more available in one country than in neighboring countries undergoing similar social and economic changes – then differences in food supply may not be ‘inevitable’ consequences of economic development, but a product of spec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Introduction – ‘Big Food’: taking a critical perspective on a global public health problem
• 1. The transitional dynamics of caloric ecosystems: changes in the food supply around the world
• 2. Big Food without big diets? Food regimes and Kenyan diets
• 3. Density of outdoor food and beverage advertising around schools in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) and Manila (The Philippines) and implications for policy
• 4. Snack food advertising in stores around public schools in Guatemala
• 5. The incursion of ‘Big Food’ in middle-income countries: a qualitative documentary case study analysis of the soft drinks industry in China and India
• 6. Comparison of food industry policies and commitments on marketing to children and product (re)formulation in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji
• 7. Encouraging big food to do the right thing for children’s health: a case study on using research to improve marketing of sugary cereals
• 8. Big Soda’s long shadow: news coverage of local proposals to tax sugar-sweetened beverages in Richmond, El Monte and Telluride
• 9. ‘Big Food’ and ‘gamified’ products: promotion, packaging, and the promise of fun
• 10. Food as pharma: marketing nutraceuticals to India’s rural poor
• Index