Food and Beverage Alliance’s trans fat pledge

The Inter­na­tion­al Food and Bev­er­age Alliance’s (IFBA) has pledged to phase out indus­tri­al­ly-processed trans-fat from the glob­al food sup­ply by 2023. The com­mit­ment sets an inter­est­ing prece­dent with regards to how oth­er ‘food vil­lains’ are tack­led in processed foods, says Glob­al­Da­ta, a lead­ing data and ana­lyt­ics company.

IFBA com­pris­es 12 food and bev­er­age pow­er­hous­es includ­ing The Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny, McDonald’s, Nes­tle and Unilever. The pledge comes a year after the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) launched an ini­tia­tive to pro­vide guid­ance for all coun­tries on how to remove arti­fi­cial trans fats from their foods, with a view to erad­i­cat­ing the ingre­di­ent world­wide by 2023.

WHO has sin­gled out indus­tri­al­ly-pro­duced trans fats as the cause of over 500,000 deaths from coro­nary heart dis­ease glob­al­ly each year, and its elim­i­na­tion from the food sup­ply rep­re­sents a sim­ple and effec­tive way to save lives.

While trans fats are unmis­tak­ably linked to a range of harm­ful out­comes, it is by far the only con­trib­u­tor to dietary-relat­ed health prob­lems. As the health impacts of oth­er ingre­di­ents such as salt, sug­ar and sat­u­rat­ed fats are increas­ing­ly scru­ti­nized, it will be inter­est­ing to see how WHO imple­ments sim­i­lar com­mit­ments and, more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, how the food and drink giants respond.

“It is far eas­i­er for brands to employ oth­er health-pro­mot­ing ini­tia­tives such as por­tion con­trol, clear nutri­tion­al infor­ma­tion and respon­si­ble mar­ket­ing. How­ev­er, enact­ing changes with regards to prod­uct ingre­di­ents and for­mu­la­tion is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent under­tak­ing. This trans fat pledge may rep­re­sent a ‘slip­pery slope’ that brands will need to nav­i­gate if WHO con­tin­ues to crack down on renowned food villains.”

Kat­ri­na Dia­monon, Con­sumer Insights Ana­lyst at GlobalData