The article examines the strategies used by big food companies to keep consumers hooked on junk food despite growing concerns about the health effects of these products. It delves into the science of food addiction, marketing tactics, and regulatory loopholes that contribute to the continued dominance of the junk food industry.
The most crucial elements in this essay are that commercial pressures limit our freedom of choice more than we realise, and that fundamental causes of poor health, such as obesity and associated noncommunicable illnesses, are linked to business entities with vast wallets and the ability to impact people’s choices. Recent data published in The Lancet links important causes of illness to business corporations with vast finances and the ability to impact people’s choices through influencing the political and economic system, as well as its underlying regulatory systems and policies. This has resulted in a rising worldwide obesity issue as well as nutritional deficits.
Industrial strategies
The “commercial determinants of health” are the ways in which business corporations alter our dietary surroundings in order to maximise their profits. They foster an environment that encourages us to make poor decisions.
They accomplish this in three ways:
- We are socialised to think that our dietary choices as adults are a direct outcome of free will and freedom of choice. But, for those with little financial resources, “freedom” is practised in a setting that is mainly moulded – and constrained – by what food and beverage makers and merchants choose to create, advertise, and sell.
- Demand is created via marketing. Supermarkets are brimming with ultra-processed goods laced with extra sugars, bad fats, and potentially dangerous ingredients. These foods are intended to stimulate your taste “bliss spot” and make you want more. Food and beverage producers sell their products through unethical methods. They use manipulative images on youngsters and “simple” solutions for feeding and pleasing their family on stressed-out parents.
- Profits from food and beverage corporations increase their political clout. This is especially true in marketplaces that are poorly regulated in low- and middle-income nations. They utilise their economic clout (employment, tax revenues) to fund business lobbying that undermines government policies.
What options are there?
The Lancet series outlines four strategies for governments, businesses, and individuals to mitigate the damages caused by large corporations and limit their influence.
Consider rethinking the political and economic structures.
Emerging nations such as Bhutan, Ecuador, and Brazil, as well as established countries like as New Zealand and Norway, are laying the groundwork for new frameworks that prioritise people’s well-being. Scotland and Wales have also taken substantial advances in the United Kingdom.
These frameworks assess commercial effects on health and the environment and support health-promoting business behaviours. Enforcing policies, such as the sugar-sweetened beverage tax, that ensure commercial entities pay their fair share of taxes and are required to account for the full costs of the health, social, and environmental harms caused by the production, consumption, and disposal of their products is one way to accomplish this.
Create an “international convention” on commercial health determinants.
With its adoption in 2003, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has had a considerable influence on public policy changes linked to tobacco control across the world. The Lancet advises that a “international convention” on business determinants of health be produced with the backing of the WHO and its member nations. The framework would need to be comprehensive enough to encompass all commercial effects on health, such as mining, fossil fuels, gambling, car industries, medications, technology, and social media. This would include copying and extending successful worldwide regulatory regimes.
Food-environment policies that is comprehensive
Public procurement is a government strategy that encourages the development and distribution of healthy food while limiting the availability of unhealthy food items. The mayor of New York City issued an order in 2008 requiring city agencies to satisfy public food procurement criteria for approximately 260 million yearly meals and snacks. The Brazilian School Food Plan, which provides healthy meals to millions of kids in public schools across Brazil, is another example of a nationwide public-procurement strategy with immediate health benefits. It has enhanced students’ health and well-being, promoted sustainable and ethical food production techniques, and controlled food sales and marketing on and off school grounds. This concept might assist countries all around the world, including South Africa, where unhealthy meals and beverages are still freely accessible and offered in schools.
