Choices’ commitment to a better product offering
March 15th, 2013
In the fight against obesity, unhealthy diets and chronic diseases, every participant has an important role to play. Policy makers want to ensure that consumers make informed and healthy food choices; scientists work towards improving public health and innovation. A number of front runner food companies are initiating or joining such initiatives. All these ambitions bring stakeholders on the same side in the fight against diet-related chronic diseases.
The current trend
At global level, engaging "an increasing number of public health actors, including foundations, civil society organizations, partnerships and the private sector, in work related to prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases" has become part of the World Health Organisation’s action points.
At EU level, in 2005, the EU Platform on Diet Physical Activity and Health has been launched with the aim of bringing together stakeholders at European level from across societies to explore common approaches to tackling diet and physical activity. Since then, its platform members have made more than 300 commitments that turned into concrete and monitored action-plans.
Earlier this year, Health Commissioner Borg expressed that "it is both heartening and inspiring to see how partners – from the public and private sectors and from European regions – are forging collaborations and putting together investments and networks, working towards the common goal of sustainable and integrated care for citizens", in his speech on "Fostering innovation in health".
About Choices
The Choices Programme has proven to be a successful cooperation between food companies, retailers, scientists, and policy-makers. Independent nutrition scientists set the criteria, that food companies must see to comply with. The programme is substantiated by scientific evidence that shows how the Choices logo stimulates healthy product development and innovation.
We work with frontrunner companies that understand the value of cooperation with independent scientists. Throughout our work, we noticed that an increasing number of food companies became willing to take responsibility for a long-term strategy on health and sustainability.
This industry cooperation led to tangible results. Currently, there are around 130 Choices-participating companies with over 7000 products carrying the logo in The Netherlands/Belgium, Czech Republic/Slovakia and Poland. These companies are constantly improving their products, hence increasing the number of Choices criteria-compliant foods.
An important aim of Choices is to indicate healthy options in all food categories, including processed foods. We find the concept of ‘ultra processed food’ a difficult one, as we do not see a clear relation between the level of processing and health properties. For example, low fat cheese demands a lot of processing and technology and is a better choice than less processed ‘normal’ or ‘artisanal’ cheese, while non-processed lard is not a very healthy option. Next to educating consumers to choose for healthy basic food, improving product composition of the commonly eaten foods is an essential contribution to the improvement of population’s diet and Choices has been successfully encouraging companies to do so since its inception.
Where we stand
Substantially more needs to be done to make our daily food healthier. Research shows that the credibility of the logo would improve if it became known that public and scientific authorities support it. We have increasingly more examples of healthy product offerings, supplemented by scientific support and government endorsement and we strongly believe that our energy should now be focused on reaching all consumers. We see many reasons to support positive initiatives and to applaud healthy product innovation and reformulation.
All in all, we stay positive in our belief that joint action and commitment will help encourage healthy eating habits. Food industry should be part of the solution to reduce obesity and unhealthy diet risk factors.