EXCLUSIVE: Where CPG Innovation Meets Food Policy
Diet and health remain top of mind across the food chain, as producers, suppliers, retailers and consumers look for ways to eat, drink and live better. In some ways, it’s an uphill battle: The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that that worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1990, while global intake of sodium among adults is twice the recommendation.
Stakeholders are working to chip away at that hill in various ways. For the past 15 years, food and beverage CPGs such as The Coca-Cola Co., General Mills, Kellanova and others have come together through the International Food & Beverage Alliance (IFBA) to help people eat in a more balanced way.
[PODCAST: Bringing Health & Well-Being to the Grocery Aisle]
Progressive Grocer recently spoke with IFBA Secretary-General Rocco Renaldi about how forward-thinking CEOs and company leaders are making strides in these goals through product innovation and reformulation, along with improved marketing and education campaigns.
Progressive Grocer: Today’s consumers seem be more knowledgeable about diet and health and yet health and wellness gaps remain. How is the IFBA’s organization and mission arguably more important than ever?
Rocco Rinaldi: IFBA was established in 2008 and the intent then was to help our companies get a grip on the growing public health issues related to diet. They [the founding CPG CEOs] initially built a platform for themselves to talk these things through and come up with a set of common commitments. These commitments have been implemented and monitored and built on in the years since.
Part of the urgency now is that the health problems are not going away. On the contrary, they remain severe in highly industrialized countries and are growing in developing countries. We have diet-related problems that are increasingly global.
We think food and diet are related to health and we also want to be part of the solution. There are ways we can do that.
PG: What are some other factors contributing to the immediacy of the movement?
RR: The problems are more global today than they were 15 or 20 years ago. The other thing that’s happened is an acceleration of regulatory initiatives around the world. I don’t think they have had the intended health impact, but nonetheless, it is still an area where policymakers are very active. What has also evolved is the debate – it’s more polarized today.
PG: Let’s talk a bit about product innovation and reformulation. How would you describe the pace of that work among major food and beverage companies looking to improve their products from a health and wellness standpoint?
RR: In the soft drink industry, for example, many changes have happened. Portions are another area, and things have evolved a lot in that domain. More broadly, if you look at where innovation money is going today, there is so much that is going into better-for-you options across the board.
With reformulations, there is particular emphasis on salt, saturated fat and sugar reduction. I will say that I think reformulation in many areas is hitting limits – at the end of the day, if a product is not palatable, it won’t fly off the shelves.
PG: What are some other business considerations to keep in mind with innovation and reformulations?
RR: The important thing that policymakers need to be cognizant of is that all work is market specific. You have to compete in a market, in America or even New York vis a vis San Francisco or Ohio vis a vis Massachusetts. Competitiveness is important in that regard and it enables different innovations and different category growth.
The other thing that matters to us, in the discourse we bring to global policymakers, is that you have to have a whole-of-society approach to some of these issues
If I am large multinational company and take out too much salt in my product in the U.S. or in Indonesia, if local competitors don’t do it, I am just going to fail, and I wouldn’t have done a service to public health or to the consumer. The things that tend to work are government driven, that bring industries as whole to the table, like the FDA salt targets.
PG: Certainly, sodium overconsumption around the world remains an issue. What are some other health concerns that have moved to the forefront and potentially for regulators?
RR: More broadly, we are working on this question of “ultra processed foods” and what it means. If you look at prevailing classifications and definitions, it’s based on criteria like how an ingredient may not not something that you’d find in your home. It is a fundamental departure from a nutrition-based approach. On that processing classification basis, the definition encompasses three-fourths of whatever you would find in your typical supermarket.
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So far, if you look at most of the research in detail, it comes to the fact that if you eat a diet that is principally composed of convenience foods, that’s not good for you, but that is basically because of the nutritional content of the food and the lack of fresh products in diets that are imbalanced.
From where I sit, we go back to two main things: one is continuous improvement of the nutritional composition of products and the second is a whole-of-society effort to have a rebalanced diet.
Based in Geneva, Switzerland, IFBA comprises 11 multinational food and non-alcoholic beverage companies that share a common goal of helping people achieved balanced diets and healthy lifestyles. It is a non-commercial, non-profit-making organization in special consultative status with the United Nations’ Economic and Social Committee.
