Clearing forest for palm oil cultivation in Indonesia. Credit: Rainforest Rescue
Sharon Friel explores in the International Journal of Health Policy and Management how to transform the corporate food system that makes highly processed, packaged and palatable unhealthy food and beverages into a healthier and more sustainable food system.
Corporate control of the global food system has resulted in greater global availability of highly processed, packaged and very palatable unhealthy food and beverages, writes Sharon Friel in the International Journal of Health Policy and Management. Environmental harm, including climate change and biodiversity loss, occurs along the supply chains associated with trans-national corporations’ (TNCs’) practices and products. In essence, the corporatization of the global food system has created the conditions that cultivate excess consumption, manufacture disease epidemics, and harm the environment. Friel argues that there is no one approach to transforming the corporate food system to become a healthy and sustainable food system. It involves coalition building; articulation of an ambitious shared vision; strategic use of multi-level institutional processes; social mobilization among like-minded and unusual bedfellows, and organized campaigns; political and policy entrepreneurs, and compelling issue framing.
Corporations and Health Watch 