Category E: Lifestyles
Category E consists of three criteria:
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E1
Employee health
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E2
Breastfeeding support
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E3
Consumer health
Food and beverage manufacturers in India can support company staff to eat healthy diets and pursue active lifestyles by providing employee health and wellness programs. As also noted by FSSAI in its Orange and Purple guidance books, in addition to other benefits, these programs can help to facilitate a corporate culture that focuses on nutrition. Supportive working practices and the provision of appropriate facilities can ensure that companies enable breastfeeding mothers to give their infants the healthiest start to life. Companies can also help consumers to adopt healthy diets and active lifestyles by supporting education programs, especially those that target groups suffering from various forms of malnutrition. This category assesses the extent to which companies support such efforts.
- Most companies (12 out of 16) make a commitment to improve the health and wellness of their employees with programs designed to address physical health and nutrition. While most of these programs (10 out of 12) are accessible to all employees, only six companies demonstrated a commitment to improving the health and wellness of groups across the wider food supply chain and not direct employees. In addition, most companies do not seem to monitor the impact of their health and wellness programs. Hindustan Unilever bucks this trend by conducting independent evaluations to capture this information, and goes a step further by monitoring the impact of programs relevant to employees across the food supply chain.
- Four of the 16 companies make public commitments to supporting breastfeeding mothers at work. Coca-Cola India, Hindustan Unilever and Nestlé India have set out their commitment in a formal policy.
- In respect to increasing nutrition literacy, nutrition education, healthy diet-oriented and active lifestyle programs aimed at groups that experience – or are at high risk of experiencing – malnutrition, eight companies publicly commit to sponsor/fund such programs. Mondelez India is the only company to demonstrate that all of its nutrition and health programs exclude product promotion or branding.
ATNI recommends that companies:
- Implement robust impact assessment tools and monitoring mechanisms for their employee health and wellness programs, and expand the coverage of these programs to include groups across the wider food supply chain that are not direct employees.
- Increase transparency in describing how they extend support to breastfeeding mothers at work, and to supporting maternal health as part of their formal company policy in line with, and beyond, Indian regulations.
- Develop their nutrition education, literacy, healthy diet-oriented and/or active lifestyle programs and conduct external and independently monitored program verifications.