15%
Insufficient materiality assessments
Companies considering whether marketing and advertising or products and services impact children
Are Food and Beverage Companies Doing Enough for Children’s Nutritional Health?
Global Child Forum
Producers & retailers of children’s food & drinks face nutritional health challenges
Our Benchmark Report 2024 explores whether the most influential food and beverage companies are living up to their responsibilities for safeguarding children’s health when they produce, advertise, and sell their products.
What are the obstacles these companies must help to overcome?
Rising levels of child obesity in many world regions is a cause for alarm.
On the other end of the scale, there’s increasing food poverty, with families in even the most developed parts of the world struggling to feed their children. This further inflates the problem of poor health when caregivers resort to buying children unhealthy food because it’s more affordable than wholesome alternatives.
Watch the video below for an overview of how food and beverage companies can begin to address some of these complex issues.
Accessibility note: You can find a text-based version of the video (suitable for screen reading software) here.
How can companies prioritise nutritional health?
Watch to find out more
Work still to do
On average, the Food, Beverage & Personal Care sector sits in the middle of the pack, with an overall score of 4.6, just slightly above the full benchmark average (4.3).
There are some strong individual performers, with eight companies from this sector making the top 15 leaderboard – which you can find here.
Six of these are food production companies or food retailers, while agricultural company Wilmar International leads the entire benchmark with a total score of 10.
Nevertheless, there are clear areas where the sector needs to improve.
Benchmark 2024 findings at a glance
Take a look below for an overview of the numbers.
Children’s nutritional health
Food, Beverage & Personal Care sector in numbers
44%
Child nutrition overlooked
Food producers and retailers reporting on product impact on consumers - but not children specifically
57%
Too few take responsibility
Food producers and retailers taking actions to contribute positively to the wider community with a focus on advancing children’s rights
The way forward
The Food & Beverage sector is, to varying extents, taking consumer health seriously.
But what’s needed now, is a broader inclusion of children’s specific needs in the way products are formulated and developed, and the way they are advertised and sold (or restricted) – and to not just view these from one-size-fits-all (mainly adult) perspective.
We need to see more reporting on actual impacts, and the progress of responsible product development and responsible marketing programmes. We also need to see the lowest-scoring companies following the examples of their higher performing peers in extending their influence and outreach into the wider community. Companies in this sector have vast potential for transforming global nutritional health. We urge them to harness this potential.
Want to know more?
Download the Benchmark Report 2024 below for more detailed insights and takeaways, and check an individual company benchmark score.
Benchmark Report 2024
The State of Children’s Rights & Business
Read the full report for more in-depth analysis on our findings, and the child rights issues facing Food, Beverage & Personal Care companies today.
Click to DownloadWhich companies are setting the pace?
Find out whether your company or investment is setting the pace or lagging behind on child rights.
Enter the company name in the search field to find out its latest benchmark score, or visit the 2024 score table. You can find the full list of companies benchmarked here.
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Go further
Focus on: Food, Beverage & Personal Care
Take a deep-dive into the performance of the Food, Beverage & Personal Care sector in our 2024 benchmark study.
To the Sector Overview