BIA-Obesity - Business Impact Assessment on Obesity and Population Level Nutrition

The first assessment 2019/2020 was conducted by researchers within Sciensano and was part of a larger European project on Science and Technology in Childhood Obesity Prevention (link is external) (STOP) led by Imperial College London. 

The second assessment 2023-2024 was also conducted by researchers within Sciensano and was part of the European FEAST project. In this new assessment commitments related to environmental sustainability were also evaluated in addition to those population nutrition.

The project also forms a part of INFORMAS (link is external) (International Network for Food and Obesity/NCDs Research, Monitoring and Action Support), a global network of public-interest organisations and researchers that seeks to monitor and benchmark public and private sector actions to create healthy food environments and reduce obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) globally. INFORMAS is coordinated by the University of Auckland (link is external).

The BIA-Obesity consists of a range of indicators across six action domains (corporate nutrition strategy, product formulation, product labelling, product and brand promotion, product accessibility, relationships with other organisations). The BIA-Sustainability covers the following action domains: Corporate sustainability strategy, packaging, emissions, energy use, water and discharge, biodiversity, food loss and waste, environmental compliance, reducing animal-based products, sustainable products. Indicators are sector-specific and are tailored for the purposes of this project to the European context.

This process results in the development of scorecards for each company to enable comparison at a sector level both nationally and internationally. The project clearly highlights areas in which companies are demonstrating leadership in the prevention of obesity, and indicates specific areas for improvement at a company, sector and industry level.

The intention is to repeat this process on a regular basis and thus to track progress over time. The findings will be communicated broadly as part of efforts to increase awareness and accountability for action.