For Kraft Foods (which was examined prior to the split into Mondelēz International and Kraft Foods Group), areas of strength included a commitment to increasing the affordability of its healthy products (with examples), development of product fortification initiatives to help address undernutrition in developing countries, and product labeling and use of health and nutrition claims. In fact, Kraft was the leading performer among companies assessed by A.T.N.I. in the area of product labeling. Areas of improvement for Kraft included a noticeable lack of publicly available data on the company’s approach to nutrition as well as the disclosure of only a limited set of objectives and targets for the company’s nutrition-related programs.
Rounding out the top 10 ranked companies were ConAgra Foods, Inc. (2.8), H.J. Heinz Co. (2.7), The Coca-Cola Co. (2.6), and The Kellogg Co. (2.5). The Hershey Co., with a score of 1.3, ranked No. 18.
Commitments not measuring up
Other key findings from the report were that companies’ practices often do not measure up to their commitments, companies could do more to address undernutrition and at a broader scale, and many companies are not very transparent about their nutrition practices.
“In the area of product formulation, many companies have made commitments and some have set quantitative targets,” the report said. “However, fewer demonstrate substantial progress against these targets.
“While some companies have commitments to make their healthy products more affordable and available, few provided evidence of actually having done so. As a result, company scores in this area of the methodology are among the lowest in the index.”
Danone scored the highest in the area of healthy and affordable products with a score of 7.7, followed by Nestle at 7.1 and Unilever at 6.5. But PepsiCo (2.7) and Kraft Foods (2) were the only other companies to have a score higher than 2, and 17 of the 25 companies were given a score of 0, according to the A.T.N.I.
Index highlights ways to improve rankings
The report identified several key recommendations for companies moving forward:
• Integrate nutrition into corporate strategies
• Implement stronger mechanisms to track performance on commitments and targets in order to improve consumer access to nutrition
• Increase efforts to address undernutrition and scale up those approaches that are most successful
• Increase public disclosure of nutrition activities.
The A.T.N.I. Global Index is expected to be published every two years.
“A.T.N.I. is not intended to name and shame companies, but instead to highlight strong practices and to provide a means for companies to benchmark their approach to nutrition against their peers and identify areas for improvement,” said Inge Kauer, executive director for the A.T.N.I. “The Index also aims to serve as an independent source of information for stakeholders interested in engaging with the food and beverage industry on nutrition issues.”
