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Big Food should be ESG’s next target
Makers of ultra-processed comestibles need to pay for the damage they are doing to their customers’ health.
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Searches for “Is aspartame in Coke Zero?” rose by 4,900 per cent after the WHO's report suggested that the artificial sweetener is carcinogenic.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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Merryn Somerset Webb
How many Diet Cokes are too many Diet Cokes? And if you sell too many, should you get an ESG (environmental, social and governance) downgrade or have a health offset of some kind? A nutri-credit perhaps? It would be bought from, say, the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom or a gut-health education group. That is not as ridiculous as it sounds, particularly if you are a big company going after a top ESG rating. These days, you can mitigate all manner of the ills you cause to society by stumping up a part of your profits for feel-good points: Airlines can buy carbon credits; builders can use biodiversity credits to offset their damage in woodlands and wetlands. So why not nutri-credits, too?
The harm done by ultra-processed food (UPF) – and by extension, those who produce it – to the health of the world is increasingly obvious. The last few months have seen a spate of books on the matter – think Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food... And Why Can’t We Stop? by Chris van Tulleken. Most nutritionists and doctors are firmly on the same page. The message? UPF is not just a bit bad for you. It is terrible for you. It messes with your head, drives you to overeat and makes you fat; it contributes to our soaring rates of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and strokes – to early death all round.
