Research Details How Junk Food Companies Influence China's Nutrition Policy
Source: New York Times
Research Details How Junk Food Companies Influence China’s Nutrition Policy
By Andrew Jacobs
Jan. 9, 2019
Happy 10 Minutes, a Chinese government campaign that encouraged schoolchildren to exercise for 10 minutes a day, would seem a laudable step toward improving public health in a nation struggling with alarming rates of childhood obesity.
But the initiative and other official Chinese efforts that emphasized exercise as the best way to lose weight were notable for what they didn’t mention: the importance of cutting back on the calorie-laden junk foods and sugary beverages that have become ubiquitous in the world’s second largest economy.
China’s fitness-is-best message, as it happens, has largely been the handiwork of Coca-Cola and other Western food and beverage giants, according to a pair of new studies that document how those companies have helped shape decades of Chinese science and public policy on obesity and diet-related illnesses like Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
The findings, published Wednesday in The BMJ and The Journal of Public Health Policy, show how Coca-Cola and other multinational food companies, operating through a group called the International Life Sciences Institute, cultivated key Chinese officials in an effort to stave off the growing movement for food regulation and soda taxes that has been sweeping the west.
The group, known as ILSI, is a worldwide organization with a Washington headquarters, funded by many of the biggest names in snack foods, including Nestlé, McDonald’s, Pepsi Co. and Yum! Brands as well as Coca-Cola. It has 17 branches, most of them in emerging economies like Mexico, India, South Africa and Brazil, and promotes itself as a bridge between scientists, government officials and multinational food companies.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/health/obesity-china-coke.html
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Related:
• Making China safe for Coke: how Coca-Cola shaped obesity science and policy in China (The BMJ)
• Soda industry influence on obesity science and policy in China (The Journal of Public Health Policy)