The carrot or the stick? Finding a win-win solution to health and profitability

In this increasingly litigious country, we’re rather used to blaming someone else when things go wrong. But have we taken things too far when we’ve reached a point that food processors are constantly under pressure to modify their products to improve public health?

The Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) recently launched the Healthier Australia Commitment, which it says “will take measurable action to help reduce the incidence of chronic preventable diseases in Australia”. The commitment involves a number of large food companies voluntarily agreeing to reach a number of reduction targets by 2015:

• Reduce saturated fat in products by 25% - equivalent to over 3 million kilograms of saturated fat removed from the food supply.
• Reduce sodium in products by 25% - equivalent to over 270,000 kilograms of sodium removed from the food supply.
• Reduce energy, with a focus on energy-dense, nutrient-poor products by 12.5% - equivalent to over 100 billion kilojoules removed by the food supply.

Salt reduction

Bruce Neal of the George Institute for Global Health recently spoke on Radio National’s Health Report about the impact of salt reduction targets in Australia.

“What we found, slightly depressingly, is that average sodium levels in processed foods in Australia have actually gone up over the period 2008-2001 by about 9%,” Neal said. “And that’s despite ourselves, the federal government and even the food industry taking substantial efforts to try and reduce them.”

Neal estimated a national salt reduction program would cost about $10 to $20 million a year. In comparison with the estimated $1 billion a year spent on pharmaceutical hypertension intervention, Neal says a $20 million salt reduction target is “an economic no-brainer” - but who should foot the bill for this?

As WNIFT&M reported in March, consumer acceptance is a major issue when reducing salt content. A Deakin University study found that consumers perceived food labelled as “reduced salt” as less tasty than unlabelled food with presumably the same amount of salt.

If drawing attention to reformulations doesn’t appear to encourage consumers to make healthier choices and the current salt-reduction initiatives aren’t making a difference, then what will work? And where should the food industry’s responsibility for public health begin and end?

A win-win for everyone

Recent calls for a ‘fat tax’ and plain packaging for junk food put the responsibility for public health back on food processors and penalise consumers and processors alike. Setting reformulation targets disempowers consumers by implying they can’t make healthy food choices for themselves.

Rather than punishing, why not develop a system that positively rewards consumers for making healthy choices? Why not the carrot instead of the stick?

Researchers at Cornell University claim to have found a way to encourage consumers to make healthy choices while helping food companies remain profitable. Cornell’s Brian Wansink collaborated with Pierre Chandon of the INSEAD Business School in France to examine food marketing. The pair presented their research at the Association for Consumer Research Conference in Vancouver.

Wansink and Chandon suggest food processors make changes like reducing package sizes of less healthy foods to reduce consumption and making healthy foods more convenient by, for instance, offering fruit salads instead of whole fruit. They also suggest “re-branding” healthy foods to focus on non-health-related benefits as consumers still frequently perceive healthy food as less tasty than unhealthy food.

“People generally want food that tastes good while being affordable, varied, convenient and healthy - roughly in that order,” said Wansink. “Our research suggests that consumption of healthy and unhealthy food responds to the same marketing tactics, particularly price reduction.

“In this study we present food marketers with a ‘win-win’ situation in which they can turn the tables, compel consumers to eat healthier foods and maintain profitability,” said Wansink. “For example, marketers can steer consumers away from high-calorie sugary drinks by offering meal discounts if a person buys a diet drink - or by offering a healthy habit loyalty card when consumers opt for milk, juice or water instead of sugary drinks.”

Wansink concludes, “When all sides win, no one resists.” Definitely food for thought for Australia.

To read the full study, click here.