What role should the commercial food system play in promoting health through better diet?

Abstract

Martin White and coauthors consider that the commercial food system has the potential to show leadership and support for dietary public health, but systemic change is needed first and this is likely to require governmental action

A Model Depicting the Retail Food Environment and Customer Interactions: Components, Outcomes, and Future Directions

“…For instance, when we focus on a single RFE goal and ignore that other outcomes are produced, we create solutions that may address our goal but simultaneously produce harm in other areas. Such consequences may be unintentional or well-known (e.g., promotion of unhealthy, processed foods which increase profits, but are associated with non-communicable disease [ 130 , 131 , 132 ]). Yet, moving forward it may be important to reframe these varying outcomes from inevitable systemic trade-offs to sites of opportunity.…”

“…Working together will also push discipline-centric change agents to consider the feasibility and sustainability of their proposed solutions and may help spur the creation of more worthwhile and effective transformations. While collaboration and attention to multiple outcomes will be easy for some, other groups may require support or even accountability measures to help cultivate “common ground” (e.g., reframing from businesses profitability to sustainability), and many have already been calling for and provided specific strategies to do so [ 115 , 129 , 131 , 133 ].…”

Challenges and opportunities for better nutrition science—an essay by Tim Spector and Christopher Gardner

“…They are producing greater amounts of more affordable and accessible food for our expanding population, but at the cost of our health 1. As White and colleagues note, “the commercial food system has the potential to show leadership and support for dietary public health, but systemic change is needed first and this is likely to require governmental action.”3…”

Strengthening Local Food Systems in Times of Concomitant Global Crises: Reflections From Chile

“…White et al recently analyzed the role commercial food systems should play in positively affecting health through diet. 7 The authors concluded that to make food systems more sustainable for both human and planetary health, a change to the entire global food system is required, and that governments have the ability to speed up this change. Collective action must be taken so that the differences between what large and small-scale producers face with their respective abilities to adapt to climate change, in addition to social or health shocks, do not inadvertently create greater socioeconomic inequality and vulnerability.…”