PLoS Medicine Continues “Big Food” Series
This week’s issue of PLoS Medicine includes an article in its “Big Food” series
titled “Manufacturing Epidemics: The Role of Global Producers in Increased
Consumption of Unhealthy Commodities Including Processed Foods, Alcohol,
and Tobacco.” According to the authors, “market data on commodity sales
from EuroMonitor Passport Global Market Information database 2011 edition”
show a “significant penetration by multinational processed food manufacturers
such as Nestle, Kraft, PepsiCo, and Danone into food environments”
in low- and middle-income countries. They suggest that this penetration
coincides with a growth in the consumption of unhealthy commodities that
is reaching and even exceeding “a level presently observed” in high-income
countries.
Comparing data on global trends in tobacco and alcohol commodities, the authors claim that “population consumption of unhealthy non food commodities such as tobacco and alcohol are strongly correlated with unhealthy food commodity consumption. In other words, in countries where there are high rates of tobacco and alcohol consumption, there is also a high intake of snacks, soft drinks, processed foods, and other unhealthy food commodities. The correlations of these products with unhealthy foods suggest they share underlying risks associated with the market and regulatory environment.”
According to the authors, their research shows that “[s]ubstantial increases in
consumption of unhealthy commodities are not an inevitable consequence
of economic growth”; they also purportedly “found some evidence that
free-trade agreements with the US are linked to greater consumption of soft
drinks, even after correcting for the trading partner’s level of income per
capita. Free-trade agreements typically limit trade and market restrictions on
imports of unhealthy commodities and such non-tariff measures as licensing,
quotas, prohibitions, bans, and other restrictions having equivalent effect.”
The article observes that regulatory interventions, such as increased prices for “non-healthy” commodities and limitations on the “availability of unhealthy products are among the most effective and low-cost strategies for preventing their consumption.” The authors call for further studies “to test current and prior population-level experiments of trade and capital market integration, the spread of unhealthy commodities, and their links to adverse [noncommunicable disease] outcomes.” See PLoS Medicine, June 26, 2012.
