As the former chair of the WHO Reference Group which advised on the Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, it was disappointing to learn that Derek Yach, who originally spearheaded this WHO initiative, had accepted a post at PepsiCo. It was even more disappointing to find that the former Director-General of WHO, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who championed the WHO Strategy to Health Ministers in spite of food and soft drink industry opposition, had already been recruited very quietly to the PepsiCo Blue Ribbon Advisory Board.
Yach and Brundtland presumably believe they can achieve more in terms of improving public health by working within a single company than can be achieved by working from the outside. While it is clear in the public health and nutrition field that we must be willing to engage in a dialogue, it remains quite difficult to achieve real influence over the private sector, whose agenda has so far been one of setting its own limits. My view remains that ultimately one can achieve a greater impact on important public health issues as an independent actor, rather than as a company employee, particularly if employed in a business which has been and, to some extent, continues to be ‘part of the problem’ on a global scale.
We have to be pragmatic, but the challenge to anyone moving from working in public health to working ‘inside the system’ is that they should know they will be held accountable in demonstrating they are truly ‘part of the solution’. The acquisition of notable health experts and political advisors provides a ‘halo effect’ – or perhaps less charitably a smokescreen – behind which to hide. This strategy has been adopted not only by PepsiCo, but by many Big Food companies which seem to think that engaging a few advisers to give their blessing to some modified products offers a solution in responding to the challenge of improving diet and tackling obesity. In fact, it may undermine greater efforts to bring about real change.
I am concerned in particular that there is a basic conflict in working within the snack food sector, since branding snacks as ‘healthy’ only diverts attention from the real issues. In my view it is the culture of snacking – the consumption of superfluous calories between, or perhaps instead of healthy main meals – which is an unhealthy practice in itself. Only the other week a senior brand marketing adviser told an audience at the McGill Health Challenge Think Tank in Montreal that the food industry could not deliver ‘healthy’ snacks – only ‘healthier’. He meant the products were not quite as bad as before, but still undeserving of the self-serving health logos that have proliferated as an easy sales booster.
One of the most important issues, perhaps the overriding one, concerns the aggressive marketing of snacks and beverages to children – something now happening worldwide. Recent industry pledges to curtail advertising to children under 12 years old disguises the fact that intense marketing efforts continue across the snack and soft drink sector. PepsiCo, which has branded at least 250 of its lines with its Smart Spot logo, has said it will market only two products to the under 12 s – Baked Cheetos and Gatorade sugared drinks – from next year. I challenge them to go further.
Here is my ‘Pepsi Challenge’. Will Pepsi be the first to:
• Support an international code of conduct concerning the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children of less than 18 years of age?
• Accept this as a binding agreement (not merely a self-regulated option)?
• Halt all marketing and sales of snacks and sugary drinks in schools and in the surrounding neighborhoods?
• Produce only non-sugary breakfast cereals?
Are they ready for a world without their very sweet ‘Honey Monster’?
