The food industry: Friend or foe?
Professor Finegood, President and CEO of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, presents an initiative that persuaded her of the importance of building trust with the food industry to reduce the complexity of preventing obesity.
The initiative, which Professor Finegood led while scientific director of Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s, Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes, involved a series of workshops with representatives of academia, government, not for profit and the food industry, including Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola and Nestlé.
The workshops aimed to provide a safe space to talk within and across these sectors to find common ground in tackling the obesity epidemic.
Among other examples, Professor Finegood provided the example of Kraft Dinner, one of the most widely sold packaged foods in the world. Kraft found that sales plummeted when they marketed a “low-sodium” version of the product, but by changing the labelling to “Hint of salt” the low-sodium version sold well.