UK Food Industry - Essay Example

 UK Food Industry The obesity crisis Obesity means an individual has too much body fat than it is required. This is different from overweight as the culprit here is body fat only but being overweight can be contributed by muscle mass, bone, body water and some fat. Obesity occurs gradually when an individual takes in more calories than the body needs, the input and output balance of calories is toppled making it hard for the body to maintain shape and use excess fat instead more calories are converted into fat which deposited in several body parts including the waist, thighs belly and upper arms. Obesity can be fuelled by excessive consumption of high-fat food, genetic predisposition, and lack of physical exercise. However, several parties play a role in causing obesity in a certain population. For instance, both the government and business firms determine what type of food the population eats, any unhealthy food with high fat and sugar content will definitely cause obesity (Parkin & Boyd, 2011). This paper seeks to expound on the childhood obesity in United Kingdom, with a close analysis on the food industry’s corporate social responsibility, focusing on MacDonald restaurants and the role they have played in combating childhood obesity. In the UK, obesity has been declared a crisis since its population is gradually turning obese. For example, a research conducted in 2007 revealed that nearly 25% of all adults were obese. The figure steadily increased in 2012 with 37% of all adults in the UK being obese. This trend seems to escalate so quickly that it is estimated that by 2025 nearly 40% of Britons will be obese with the Body Mass Index greater than 30kg/M². The figure is even reaching Biblical proportions by the 2050 with the speculations of obesity affecting 60% of adult men and 50% of adult females (Parlińska, A, & Rembielak, 2014). The Foresight Report of 2007 exposed causes of obesity among the UK’s population. These causes were broadly categorized into four groups, the social influences that entail individual habits and psychology, the activity environment focusing of individual’s physical activity practices, biology which basically means genetic predisposition to obesity and food environment that sums up all types of food consumed as well as their caloric and fat content. Each of these factors play a role in causing obesity in the UK but the most adamant one is the food environment. Obesity easily becomes a crisis because it is associated with other medical conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and stroke and colon cancer among others (Ntuk, Gill, Mackay, Sattar & Pell, 2014). It is clearly known that the UK has a problem with its diet structure; there is high sugar and fat in almost all types of food sold on the market. It is even more surprising that there seem to be no difference in sugar and fat content between what is termed junk and healthy food. Currently there is excess refined foodstuff on the market than before, inadequate fruit and vegetable supply is also evident as well as plenty of Tran’s fats. This gives the consumers no choice but to dine on the available obesity causing food. Not having a clear boundary between healthy and junk food is what ails the UK’s population. These people are given limited choice of food and what is available is only scaling down their health as Shepherd (2010) found out. To address obesity, it requires more than one party. The Corporate Social Responsibility calls for the unification of the government, the business enterprises, and the public population to work together. Public policies and elements of sustainable development equally apply .Obesity is a social problem and this implies that either somebody is having it or is affected by his or her significant others being obese. It is now important that obesity be not regarded as an individual’s issue but as a common threat facing everybody including the government and the commercial sector (Stuckler & Basu, 2013). Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development Social responsibility entails the relationship that exists between individuals and commercial organizations with the government as the overseer; it modifies the characteristics and behaviours governing the relationship between these parties. Sustainable development meets the needs of the current time without necessarily infringing on the ability of the future posterity to meet efficiently their own needs without encountering dire shortages. Sustainable development has several principles to ensure its efficacy (Schrempf, 2014). People are required to live within the environmental limits, the commercial field is required to achieve a sustainable economy for all people, and good governances must be promoted to protect the citizens from any form of harm, using sound scientific methods responsibly to enhance development, and promoting a robust, healthy, and fair society (Tabassum & Batty, 2013). Dimensions of social responsibility Dimensions are divided into three main categories, the human responsibilities, and the environmental responsibilities. Even though businesses are driven by the need to make profit, they should take in consideration the quality of their products and services. For this case, the food industry in the UK must protect their customers by providing high quality and healthy food. It should be the responsibility of these businesses to moderate fat and sugar content while preparing consumables thereby protecting its customers from getting obese as research conducted by Griffiths, Frearson, Taylor, Radley & Cooke (2014) purports. Human responsibilities feature as legal aspects that ensure fairness and justice when dealing with shareholders, customers, suppliers, the government and the society. They give special attention to health concerns at work, home, and all places of interaction. The element of focus in this case is the healthy status of food circulating in all these places. Consumer rights and welfare are of utter importance here. It goes further to better the bargaining power and influence of consumers by encouraging formation of trade unions and active participation in the bid to better the quality of food products as a preventive measure against obesity. Environmental responsibility is more concerned with all human activities that can help protect the environment. To have a sustainable economy and development it is imperative that the population is healthy and not so much time and resources are being used to treat both communicable and non-communicable diseases. It is not realistic to anticipate a future with sustainable development when obesity is an eminent threat to both the health of the current population and the manner in which resources are being used to fight it. For instance, the cost of treating obesity related illnesses is alarming; in 1998, the cost stood at £ 479.3 million and drastically rose to £4.2 billion in 2007. It is clear that the productivity rate of UK is reduced by the disease burden to the economy (Mitchell, Cowburn & Foster, 2011). Individuals have the responsibility of practicing healthy eating habits. This implies that they are to be cautious of what they eat so as not to compromise their health. It is a fact that obesity is more of a habit disease caught by slovenly eating habits especially of unhealthy food. Parents must act as role models to their children by encouraging consumption of healthy living food. Use of deep fried food, high-sugar and fat food must be discouraged (Lake, 2009). Little priority should be given to this type of food, as it is not healthy. The high levels of sugar and trans-fats are the main causative agents for the increased obesity rate in the UK community. Avoidance or limiting intake of these substances is the best choice to fighting obesity. It is also the responsibilities of individuals to have regular physical exercise to promote physical fitness. Exercise is very vital in cutting down excess body fat and improving blood circulation. During exercise, the body utilizes excess calories by stepping up the metabolic rate, this way the body keeps balance of the fat content limiting chances of obesity. However, these individuals have limited choice of healthy food. There still exist shareholder setbacks in the name of value myths, consumers of food industry products are can as well be regarded as shareholders since they play an important role in determining the demand and supply trend of these goods. So sad to know they have an insignificant role in determining the quality of food they eat, it affects their health, and yet their grievances are not fully addressed to solve the problem of unhealthy food (Rutkow, Vernick, Edwards, Rodman & Barry, 2015). Jebb (2014) found out that some companies blindfold people by only advertising the good part of their food product and leaving out the harmful part. For example in the UK, not so much is revealed of the content of fizzy drinks such as coca cola. Adverts focus only on how the drinks are refreshing not mentioning the sugar content in them as well as carbon level used to preserver them. A good example is this coca cola brand called Super Big Gulp weigh 91grams contains 364 calories while that weighing 128grams has 512 calories. This information is left out intentionally and consumers are not aware, this increases the risk of becoming obese by 51% (Sundin, Fear, Wessely, Rona, 2011). In trying to understand what goes on in these food industry businesses, it comes out clear that a lot of attention is directed towards making profit at the expense of customer safety just as the companies are not so much concerned with efficiency. However, individuals are shareholders in these companies they have little influence over the quality of products as their role only limited to dividends. Shareholders’ having different influential powers in a business is also another factor inhibiting quality and healthy production of food. Not all firms exhibit this type of behaviour; some are ethically sensitive and attribute the success of their business to proper observation of ethical factors. They also turn out to be food industries that are well managed and this has hope in achieving prolonged profitable periods with sustained economic development. Generally, the food industries can help fight this obesity menace only if they take up several preventive measures while preparing consumables. It will be a good step to begin with if these industries begin by limiting fat and sugar content they use in food. Furthermore, they should clearly indicate realistic figures of the food content so that the public are fully aware of what they are feeding on. Indicating the amount of calories and fat in food is the responsibility of food industry. Besides expressing the quality and safety of their food product, they will be promoting dietary information to the public. Food industry can be interested in social responsibility to improve its profitability through good market reputation, as a sense of moral obligation and to meet stakeholders’ demands (Pallan, Parry, Cheng & Adab, 2013). The government has been at the forefront in combating the escalation off the rates of obesity in United Kingdom. Essentially, the focus has been on the food industries. First, there has been a forceful and consistent public criticism of the way several industries have contributed to the crisis escalation. Primarily, the food industries need to auto regulate themselves to have a clear protection of the public from the menace. All is possible in cases of policy developments, implementation, and evaluation. Food industry and CSR in obesity reduction The food industry has a role to play in the reduction of childhood obesity rates. Most significantly, it is worth noting that they are the major contributors of escalating obesity rates, through their uncontrolled food processing, manufacturing, and sales. There is an alarming rate in the strength of the forces contributing to the childhood obesity, being affiliated to poor marketing, advertising, and promotion of such products in school and lack of caloric notification on the food labels. The food industry has an ethical and social responsibility to combat the childhood obesity crisis. Ethics entails the moral application and norms to all the activities making up the commercial circles of the businesses. The current businesses have the mandate to go far beyond their profit targeted activities, and ensure that they are concerned about the communities they serve, through promotion of their wellbeing. CSR chips in to integrate the business, social and environmental activities, and interaction into their stakeholders. Fundamental drivers to adoption of the program include pressures form the stakeholders, the stakeholders’ awareness of the ethical practices, pressure from the investors and peers. Iacobucci (2014) posits three CSR types, with the inclusion of ethical, strategic and altruism. Ethically, the food industry possess the moral obligation to production of safe foods to the consumers, those with low caloric content, and not at the verge of causing excessive weight gain. Their profit goal should not be in consistent conflict with the societal moral responsibility. The content in the marketing process should undergo persistent regulation. First, it is the mandate of the industry management team to ensure that there is incorporation of CSR in development of the marketing plan. Its philanthropic philosophies should have a close connection to the organizational objectives, as well as observance of other ethical issues. Unethical marketing practises have been on rise, whereby there have been a sharp rise in the use of false information for self-gain. Such deceptive marketing of the products fails to observe the detrimental effects the products have to the society. The spread of falsified information about certain products has been a point of concern among many people. Prior to the escalating rates of childhood obesity crisis, the United Kingdom marketing monitoring team noted that advertisements with children as the target were on rise. Such information misleads the young children, who goes ahead and venture on the same to test of the viability of the messages (Jebb, 2014). Regulation of such advertisements relieves the burden of stereotypes, making the consumers possess the awareness of their choices. Psychologists also argue that various approaches to advertising limits the information spread to the target consumers, hence, a reduction in compulsive eating. Myriads of people assume that all advertisements deliver true information of the products, hence end up being duped in the purchase process. The advertisements are spread all over- in the video games, magazines and the rest of electronic devices. In addition, many fast food have a target on low-income populations, an element that has direct implication to obesity. Advertising remains the most influential method of acquisition of new clients. The food industry must be ready to forego the benefits they gain from the marketing process, but rather, look into the advantage of the derailed marketing with reference to curbing childhood obesity. Their investment agenda should focus from sheer profits they gain to complete maintenance of public health. Nutrition labelling ensures that all the food consumers’ reports awareness on the caloric content of the products on purchase. The various labelling must be in place to reveal the percentages content in the every product. The food container should possess a clear label on the packets, with an indicator of the caloric content and the servings available, always references with the number of calories available (Stuckler & Basu, 2013). In the recent past, there have been an alarming confusion in the regulation of ideal number of servings and portions in packaged food. Distortion has been on rise, but the packaging firms can take an initiative to have a reduction in portion sizes, as well as consumer education on the ideal food consumption behaviour. All that will aim at reduction in the rates of childhood obesity. Furthermore, the World Health Organization did a global survey on diet, physical health and activity, and proposed several measure to the food industry. Among the provisions have been adoption of healthy diets policies with accordance to global strategies. They had to limit all the levels of saturated fats, salts levels and free sugars. Concisely, even as they do aim at achieving that, their aim should also focus at development of affordable and nutritious choices to their target consumers. Additionally, they had to demonstrate professionalism and responsibility in their marketing procedures. Essentially, a good number of the recommendation have been adopted, but not all of them. Therefore, the industries still have a niche to fill ('Government, 2014). A case approach- McDonald As leading fast food restaurant in UK, McDonald have been at the verge of crisis form bot the public and the government, as to having not adopted ideal policies in the fight towards combating childhood obesity. However, it has engaged in diversification of menu to fit health options due to societal pressure. This short piece will analyse how MacDonald utilize corporate social responsibility to fit the consumer demands in curbing childhood obesity crisis. Furthermore, the perception of the consumers towards the approaches will be evaluated. Social constructionism state that the societal interaction, expansion, and discussions leads to the emergence of ideologies. Such ideologies act as dictates to the policies in the society. The resulting reaction from people after the McDonald posting of quality matters most obliges it to approach the obesity issue with the utility of CSR as a way of defending self, but still maintaining its fair share of the market (Alhéritière, Montois, Galinski, Tazarourte & Lapostolle, 2013). Since its inception, the McDonald has shown massive expansion, being in operational in over 119 countries. Most significantly, the fact that its location is in a health and obesity sensitive environment forces it to incorporate health options in the food provided. In addition, they have made an incorporation of nutritional information in all their products. It is hence clear that the restaurant is at the forefront of its campaign towards reduction of health related conditions and promotion of preventive measures to curb lifestyle related diseases. McDonald have had a difficult moment in adoption of appropriate CSR to combat childhood obesity. First, it has admitted that the journey towards the combating the situation cannot be achieved without multi-sectorial approaches and collaborations. Non-governmental organization such as Green Peace have demonstrated interest to link with them, and striving to achieve a better tomorrow. In its path to achieve the objectives, they have adopted the sustainable fish servings, through its collaboration with Marine Stewardship Industry. Through that, they demonstrate that they are keen in being responsible. Primarily, McDonald has demonstrated an impressive record, when it comes to CSR meant to reduce childhood obesity and environmental pollution. However, critics still argue that their initiatives fails to outdo the negative health implication caused by their fast foods. Its prime products still have a close link to child hood obesity and other lifestyle related conditions. The usage of social media demonstrate the perception of the public towards the McDonalds allegations to promote quality food production. The consumers seem disgusted and irritated by the slogans. Yes, the restaurant has the drive to combating the health crisis, but they rarely implement it to the end. The post is hence deceiving and not to be trusted by the consumers. Regard the restaurant as a crap, hurling insults with reference to their food as toxic. Most statements are negative, and seems to portray the opposite of their campaigns. The communication by the McDonald seems untrustworthy and does not satisfy the needs of the consumers. The restaurant fails to address the issue with the seriousness it deserves. 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