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 The companies, including Campbell Soup and PepsiCo, announced in
January that they had collectively sold 6.4 trillion fewer calories
in the United States in 2012 than in 2007. The drop - 10.6 percent,
or 78 calories per person per day - was hailed as an important
contribution to the nation's fight against obesity.
An independent analysis published on Wednesday, however, underlines
how difficult it may be for voluntary corporate action to move the
needle on America's weight problem.
For one thing, total calories from packaged goods sold to households
with children by the companies in the "Healthy Weight Commitment
Foundation" did not change from 2011 to 2012.
That "suggests that companies made easier changes first and that
reductions might be more difficult in the future," said Barry Popkin
of the University of North Carolina, who led the analysis, which was
published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. "That
raises a major public health concern."
The analysis comes as progress against obesity has stalled. In
2007-2008, according to government data, 34 percent of adults were
obese. In 2011-2012, 35 percent were.
In 2011-2012, 16.9 percent of children aged 2 to 19 were obese,
exactly what it was in 2007-2008.
One reason a reduction in calories sold has not translated into a
reduction in obesity could be that the balance of protein, fats and
carbohydrates in a diet may be more important for weight than
calories, said obesity expert Kevin Fontaine of the University of
Alabama at Birmingham.
"If food companies are just taking calories out, it therefore might
not produce weight change" in the population, he said.
In 2010 the companies that formed the Healthy Weight Commitment
Foundation, including ConAgra Foods, Kellogg and Unilever, pledged
to remove 1 trillion calories from the U.S. marketplace by 2012 and
1.5 trillion by 2015, compared with 2007.
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Most of the 6.4 trillion fewer calories sold since that baseline
year came from sweets and snacks, grain products and soft drinks, as
a result of reformulations, such as reducing products' fat and sugar
content, as well as a greater marketing effort around healthier
products.
In the new analysis, the UNC researchers drilled down into what
families with 2-to-18-year olds bought.
Based on data from 61,126 households, they found that the companies
sold 66 fewer calories per person per day to those families in 2012
than in 2007. That is less than the reduction of 78 fewer calories
per person per day among all consumers.
Food companies not part of the healthy weight group reduced calories
sold since 2008 more than they did from 2000 to 2007, though they
made no pledge to do so, the UNC analysis found.
(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
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