ATNi engages in the IFRS/ISSB consultation on amendments to the SASB standards

The food and beverage industry’s transition towards providing more nutritious products for all is essential to mitigating the growing health and economic burdens of poor diets. Undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency are estimated to cost the global economy $1 trillion, and an additional $2 trillion is lost due to overweight and obesity annually. This represents a loss of 2-3% of global GDP each year. However, transparency and accountability regarding companies’ nutrition strategies, targets and performance are needed to drive progress towards this goal. To date, sustainability reporting frameworks, which guide companies’ disclosures on topics such as nutrition, have only partially supported this need. Encouragingly, recent updates to the SASB standards for Processed Foods suggest that change may be on the horizon. 

Data: The missing link for systemic transformation

Robust, comparable, and accessible data on the healthiness of product portfolios and marketing and labelling strategies of the world’s largest food companies are vital for transforming food systems. Such data enables informed policymaking, levels the playing field among market actors, and empowers investors to assess the relationship between financial performance and product healthiness. Yet, this data remains scarce – and this concern is echoed by key stakeholders committed to driving systemic change. ATNi has been assessing the food sector to fill this gap for over ten years, with data generated by our research informing investment and policy decisions globally.  

IFRS/ISSB prioritizes Food & Beverage in SASB standard revisions 

The ongoing IFRS/ISSB consultation on the amendments to the sustainability reporting standards features the SASB Processed Foods sector as the only non-extractive industry amongst 9 sector standards being revised. As of 2025, 2,213 companies across 72 jurisdictions have reported using SASB Standards, with nearly a quarter of them belonging to the S&P Global index. The proposed changes, currently open for public consultation until November 30, are a step forward to improved disclosures. Key enhancements include: 

• Health and Nutrition:The revised metrics now specify that nationally and internationally recognized NPMs should be used for determining the proportion of revenues from healthy foods. This is a step forward towards more credible data on portfolio healthiness.
• Product Labelling & Marketing: The updates introduce greater precision in disclosures, helping to increase transparency over corporate marketing and labelling practices and exposure to regulatory developments.
  

See the proposed changes
Public consultation

Drawing over a decade of experience evaluating the world’s largest food and beverage manufacturers across nutrition-related dimensions, ATNi is currently finalizing a detailed response to the consultation. Our recommendations aim to help IFRS/ISSB further refine the Processed Foods standard by incorporating financially material elements that matter to both companies and investors with focus on the following dimensions: 

• Governance and Advocacy: Include disclosures on governance for managing nutrition and health risks and opportunities, as well as lobbying and policy advocacy activities. 
• Granularity of reported data: Encourage companies to report data on the healthiness of their product portfolios across all markets, ideally broken down by region or country. 
• Inclusion of unregulated markets: Expand disclosures on efforts to uphold high marketing and labelling standards beyond regulated jurisdictions.
• Product Innovation:Broaden the scope of the new “Product Innovation” metric to capture the use of emerging technologies that enhance product healthiness.

Additionally, we make recommendations for clearer definitions, examples, and guidance to reduce reporting burden for the companies and enhance the utility of disclosures for investors. 

Elevating workplace nutrition in sustainability reporting 

Workforce nutrition, i.e., companies’ efforts to promote healthy diets at workplaces, remains a blind spot in major sustainability frameworks, despite its well-documented financial materiality. Malnutrition has proven impact on workers’ physical and cognitive capacity and health, leading to presenteeism (reduced productivity at work) and absenteeism (physical absence from the workplace).This in turn can lead to reduced economic output and to increased firm costs related to sickness absence, healthcare expenditure, staff turnover, early retirement and staff training. We therefore urge the inclusion of workplace nutrition disclosures under the “Workplace Health and Safety” category to promote transparency and drive meaningful action in workforce well-being. 

Final considerations 

The IFRS/ISSB’s focus on improving Processed Foods metrics is a positive development towards integrating nutrition into sustainability frameworks. However, some caveats remain.  

Firstly, for any disclosure to be incorporated into the IFRS/ISSB standards, it must be supported by robust evidence demonstrating its financial materiality to reporting companies. As more data on companies’ nutrition performance becomes available, it should be leveraged to strengthen the evidence about the financial materiality of nutrition, and thereby, the case for transparency and even more ambitious disclosures. 

Secondly, SASB’s sector-specific standards remain voluntary; i.e. companies reporting under IFRS will be required to refer to and consider the SASB Standards when identifying relevant sustainability-related risks and opportunities to report. This creates a loophole that allows underperforming companies to omit these disclosures from their sustainability reports, limiting the comparability and completeness of available data. 

Until these gaps are addressed by further research and regulatory developments, independent assessments, such as ATNi’s Global Index, remain essential for holding companies accountable and fostering transparency in nutrition performance beyond dimensions with a proven impact of the reporting company’s bottom line. 

If you have any questions/inquiries about this consultation process, or wish to access ATNi’s stakeholder guidance, please contact investor.support@atni.org