The commercial determinants of unhealthy diets

Alex Chung; Lucy Westerman; Jane Martin; Sharon Friel

doi:10.1071/phrp3232221

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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The commercial determinants of unhealthy diets

Alex Chung ^A ^* , Lucy Westerman ^B , Jane Martin ^C and Sharon Friel ^D

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Health and Social Care Unit, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

^B Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), Melbourne, Australia

^C Obesity Policy Coalition, Melbourne, VIC, Australia; Cancer Council Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

^D Menzies Centre for Health Governance, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

^* Correspondence to: alexandra.chung@monash.edu

Public Health Research and Practice 32, e3232221 https://doi.org/10.17061/phrp3232221

Published: 12 October 2022

2022 © Chung et al. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence, which allows others to redistribute, adapt and share this work non-commercially provided they attribute the work and any adapted version of it is distributed under the same Creative Commons licence terms.

Abstract

Unhealthy diets are a leading risk factor for obesity and non-communicable disease. Food choices are made within the context of people’s social circumstances as well as the broader food environment, which is shaped extensively by food and beverage industry practices, which include market, financial and political activities undertaken to increase the sale and consumption of highly processed food and beverages. To reduce the burden of unhealthy diets, there is a clear need for government-led action to disrupt the balance of power that currently favours commercial interests over public health.