Former Unilever CEO Paul Polman Urges Food and Beverage Companies to Deliver Healthier, More Sustainable Products

Grocery aisles are filled with highly processed foods. The 2030 Compact on Healthy & Sustainable Diets campaign being launched at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in March 2025 in Paris is aiming to get major, global food and beverage companies to increase the proportion of healthy foods they make and sell. They also want them to market their products more responsibly.

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Former

        Unilever

CEO Paul Polman, the Rockefeller Foundation, and healthy nutrition advocates are on a campaign to get big food and beverage companies and retailers to produce and market more healthy products.

For Polman, who eschewed quarterly financial reporting and drove sustainable business practices in his decade at Unilever, it’s critical for companies to collectively work together to improve human health, nutrition, and the biodiversity of the planet.

“Every business depends on biodiversity, every business depends on healthy economies, and every business is incurring the cost of our failures,” says Polman, who left Unilever in 2019. “The cost of not acting is now becoming higher than the cost of acting. Yet it’s difficult to get it on the corporate agenda.”

Last week, a letter was sent to the leaders of major, global food and beverage companies urging them to create healthier and more sustainably sourced products and to market so-called junk foods high in salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats, more responsibly.

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According to the letter, “70% of the world’s processed foods do not fit in a healthy diet.” The result of more people globally, particularly in emerging markets, consuming these diets is a rise in diabetes, heart disease, and cancer—a cost they quantified at US$11 trillion.

“Add environmental and economic costs (e.g. climate change, biodiversity loss, water depletion, lost working days) and the final bill comes in at US$19 trillion,” the letter said.

The letter was signed by Polman, Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah, Vinita Bali—head of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s National Nutrition Committee—and Greg Garrett, the executive director of the Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNI), a global nonprofit based in the Netherlands. Several other individuals and organizations endorsed the letter, including Sam Kass, a former White House chef who worked with Michelle Obama on her “Let’s Move!” campaign.

Behind the effort is a philosophy that individual companies alone can’t make a big enough difference. What focusing on the largest food and beverage companies does is “get you to create tipping points,” says Polman, who is a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s board.

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For instance, it would be easy for an individual company to take trans-fatty acids, sugars, and salt out of the foods they sell. “But then nobody buys your product—it’s not the solution,” he says.

Instead, the industry has to come up with collective solutions that include educating consumers. And in Polman’s view, the industry can create healthier alternatives that are just as affordable as junk food.

“This is such a critical part of making this world more sustainable, more equitable, and more inclusive,” he says.

Before these largely public food and beverage companies can begin to think about big picture issues such as human health and nutrition, climate change, and biodiversity loss, they have to counter the short-term pressures of delivering strong financial results quarter after quarter. They also have to navigate geopolitical tensions, disruptions in their value chains, and the unknowns of artificial intelligence, Polman says.

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“These CEOs tend to be pulled down by their boards or by others in the financial market in the shorter term, and [producing and marketing healthier foods] requires longer-term solutions,” he says.

ATNI has tracked the progress of 25 of the largest global food and beverage manufacturers over the past 11 years, periodically publishing an index. Companies are scored on their governance, products, marketing, labeling, and engagement, among other factors. The latest index published in 2021 ranked Nestlé on top with a score of 6.7 out of 10 with a top-three rank in all categories; Unilever was second, with a score of 6.3.

The index will be published again in November, tracking 30 companies this time, Garrett says. “They’re not doing well,” he says.

“We’ve seen marginal changes, but we want food and beverage companies to commit to healthier food products as core to their businesses,” he says. “This letter is connected to an effort to see if we can see acceleration.”

It’s a message they argue is good for business, as well as for people.

“We have with us some of the biggest institutional investors in the world,” Garrett says.

They include Legal and General Management in the U.K., Achmea Investment Management based in the Netherlands, and Trinity Health in Michigan—all of which own shares in food and beverage makers. Another 89 unnamed investors have also endorsed ATNI’s work in nutrition and health.

These investors “care about the bottom line, but want [to be] invested in companies that care about the future,” Garrett says.

According to Garrett, two major food and beverage companies have already agreed to specific targets and principles advocated by the 2030 Compact on Healthy and Sustainable Diets campaign being launched at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in March 2025 in Paris.

The campaign is aiming to have companies commit to increasing the proportion of healthy foods in their portfolios, and to commit to responsibly marketing less healthy products—specifically by not targeting minors. They are also asking companies to support sustainable food production that meets deforestation and greenhouse gas emission targets.

In addition, they are asking companies to recommit to the Paris Agreement on climate change, or to any other climate target they’ve previously identified, Garrett says. They also want companies to make their healthier offerings as affordable as unhealthy ones.

“Junk food sells well in lots of countries, … we’re trying to encourage CEOS to make a stand and think about 10 to 15 years down the road versus next year,” he says.

The signatories to these targets and principles will be made public at the March summit in Paris, he says.