We live in a fat society - and food companies are beginning to accept that although they do not bear sole responsibility for the fact, they have to respond to the issue. Now a new study has compared the responses by ten of the biggest food producers to sort out the leaders from the laggards.

Is it really that much of a problem? According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) over 1.6 billion adults are overweight, of whom around 400 million are clinically obese. In addition, 155 million school age children are overweight as well, which is one in ten children globally. The problem is seen in both developed and developing countries and, at the moment, the growing levels of attention being given to the issue has not made any difference to the year on year increase in the problem.

The growth in obesity is leading to other health problems that are associated with the condition, particularly increases in heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes. Changing diets – particularly in developing countries that are adopting more Western diets – and increasingly sedentary lifestyles are chiefly to blame.

The first response of food companies - that of denial - was pretty understandable. The truth is that they had been doing what any good marketing company should do - following consumer demands which, in this case, led them towards more convenience foods which could only be made as convenient as the consumer wanted by adding all sorts of extra components that you would probably not find in home cooked food.

Now things have changed. The food companies have felt the heat of public pressure, and have accepted that whereas before they believed they could only be held to be responsible for the things they actually did, they had entered a world where they were expected to do what they could to actually influence the behaviour of customers. This was new territory in many ways.

So they have begun reformulating products to make them healthier, they are providing more consumer information through labelling and other point-of-sale communications. They have been adjusting their marketing practices and are now to be heard debating whether or not it is legitimate any more to target advertising directly at children.

But it is never enough, and the threat of regulation is not far away. Legislators mutter about new rules over marketing, labelling and food composition. None of these measures would be realistically likely to have the slightest impact on the problem of growing levels of obesity, but it would fulfil one key political criteria - the need for the governments to be seen to be doing something about the problem, and to do so by coming down tough on one group that the general population believes are largely to blame, whether it's true or not.

In the face of this challenging business environment, the new report by JP Morgan and Insight Investment is very timely. The review looked at what companies were doing across their operations, and separated this into four sections:

* Framing the issue - how well the company understood the challenges

* Formulating objectives and strategy - what the company plans to do

* Governance mechanisms - how the company makes decisions and consults with external stakeholders

* Implementing the strategy - how it is doing in actually delivering against its analysis.

The companies that will get the most good cheer from the report are Danone, Unilever and Nestle. These three companies came in the top scoring section.

Danone was given credit for its comprehensive policy and strategy on health issues, as well as for its excellent product labelling and consumer information. Unilever did well because it had done the most in reformulating products across its range bringing them wherever possible within the FDA / EU nutrition standards. It has also produced a strong set of marketing principles, particularly in relation to marketing to children. Nestle's 60/40+ programme aims to ensure that the company's products are not only preferred by 6 out of 10 people, but also have a better nutritional profile than competitors, and provides accessible and affordable products to the poorest communities in many markets.

At the less happy end of the scale, PepsiCo, Coca Cola and Premier Foods. The report authors criticised the companies for having been slow to respond to the agenda, although all of them are to a significant degree committed to doing so.

Overall, the report authors said that they found a broadly encouraging picture of companies taking action on obesity, whilst seeking to do so in a way that gave them competitive advantage. European companies seem to be doing the most. The US companies are taking steps, but tend to focus these on their home markets with much less happening in developing countries.

One example of good progress is in the area of transfats. Danone eliminated transfats in 1998, and Unilever and Nestle have begun to remove them from their entire production. Pepsi is in the process of setting targets and hopes to be transfat free by the end of the year.

Other than the three 'top' companies, the biggest failing seems to be in actually communicating about the health and wellness programmes.

But consciousness has definitely been raised. Speaking at the CIAA Congress in 2006, Patrick Cescau, the CEO of Unilever said: "It is puzzling, with the benefit of hindsight, why a large part of the food industry took its eye off the 'nutritional' ball during the 1990's. Unfortunately, while we were focused on issues of taste, convenience and value consumers were getting fat, unfit and progressively unhealthier ... It is important to acknowledge that the issues we face as a European food industry are partly an outcome of our own success."

The report finishes with a number of recommendations. A key one is that companies should look at taking action across all markets, not just their home markets. It is one of the facts that breeds cynicism and disbelief - when a company only takes action in the places where it has been threatened with legislation, people assume that it is because the company wants to continue to 'get away with' bad practice where it can, to the detriment of health in those areas.

In this spirit, the report recommends that companies reformulate products across their whole portfolio, and that they should offer healthy options to the poorest segments of customers who are often the ones that have the poorest diet.

Of course, the food companies are not alone, and it would have been interesting to benchmark some of the other players in all this. How many of the computer games companies are accepting their share of responsibility for increasingly sedentary lifestyles? It has certainly been a point of debate for them, but how much has that translated into action? And what about governments? In the UK, the government contributed to the problem in the 1980s by selling off school playing fields, and is now seeking to make good by improving the quality of school dinners. What else hould it be doing, other than pointing the finger of blame at the food companies?

About Mallen Baker

Mallen is currently responsible for developing Business in the Community's approach to marketplace issues, which includes how companies manage issues that arise around their core products and services.

He initiated the Business Impact Review Group - the group of 20 companies who developed a common approach to CSR reporting, and was responsible for the work of the Business Impact Taskforce which produced the landmark "Winning with Integrity" report. To read more of Mallen’s blogs visit www.mallenbaker.net.

If you are interested in submitting your blog for consideration please email editor@csrwire.com