Investors who manage $3 trillion in assets are pressing food multinationals Nestlé, Danone, Kraft Heinz and Kellogg to set new health disclosures and targets after a successful campaign for change at Unilever.
Investors, including Legal & General Investment Management and BMO Global Asset Management, have written to company boards ahead of their annual meetings, a demonstration of shareholder concern about nutrition and obesity.
In a push also coordinated by the responsible investment nonprofit ShareAction, a smaller group of the same investors last month insured Unilever’s new health commitments.
Unilever said it would publish nutrition scores for its food portfolio against external metrics, not just its own measures, and set new targets, after investors submitted a resolution ahead of its AGM.
The new push for major food brands to improve their health credentials comes as governments globally tighten regulations to help curb obesity.
Ignacio Vázquez, Senior Manager at ShareAction, said: “Regulatory trends, as well as consumer support for healthier products, mean that food companies must consider health as an increasingly important risk factor.
“Investors need companies to use standardized health metrics to determine their exposure to regulatory risk and their position relative to competitors.”
ShareAction, which previously managed The UK’s Tesco supermarket on obesity, requested meetings with the chairman of each of the food manufacturers and said the public move represented an “escalation” of private discussions.
Vázquez added: “If you look at the reports from manufacturers and supermarkets, you will find information about what they are doing regarding climate change, plastics, biodiversity, etc., but nutrition and health have not been adequately addressed.
“What has changed in recent years is that Covid and the link to excess weight have put a spotlight on unhealthy food and governments around the world. [are] really increasing regulations.”
The letters contrasted the companies’ own assessments of their products with findings using external metrics from the independent Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNI).
For example, Nestlé said that in 2019, 80.5% of its top food and beverage sales came from products that met the Nestlé Nutrition Foundation criteria. But ATNI puts the proportion of healthy product sales at 43 percent.
financial times last year revealed that Nestlé had assessed its portfolio internally against third-party metrics and found that more than 60 percent of its core foods and beverages did not meet a “recognized definition of health.”
Nestlé said: “As part of our ongoing work across the company to update our sustainable approach to nutrition and health, we are . . . looking for the best way to compare ourselves with external and recognized standards”.
Danone says 90 per cent of its sales are from healthy products, but ATNI puts the figure at 65 per cent, while Kraft Heinz’s own figure of 76 per cent contrasts with ATNI’s 39 per cent. Kellogg doesn’t report health data, but ATNI says only 27 percent of its sales are from healthy products.
Surveys conducted by Censuswide for ShareAction in the UK, US, Germany, France, Australia and Mexico found public support for further action. Among those surveyed, 81 percent said they supported government regulation to make healthy foods cheaper and more widely available.
Danone said it was “committed to providing increasingly clear and complete information on the ingredients and nutritional value of our products”, including through the use of the European Nutri-Score system.
Kellogg said: “We believe in the need to refocus attention towards a holistic approach to wellness, considering not only the nutrients that individual foods provide, but also how foods make people feel and the impact they have on society and the environment. planet”.
