The PLoS Medicine series on Big Food, launched earlier this month, aims to examine and stimulate debate about the activities and influence of the food industry in global health. We define “Big Food” as the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power. The series adopts a multidisciplinary approach and includes critical perspectives from around the world. It represents one of first times such issues have been examined in the general medical literature.
In this month's Editorial to launch the series, the PLoS Medicine Editors discuss the rationale and process of commissioning articles for the series. As they note, industry in health has long fascinated PLoS Medicine but the journal's focus on Big Food is new. Food, unlike tobacco and drugs, is necessary to live and is central to health and disease. And yet the big multinational food companies control what people everywhere eat, resulting in a stark and sick irony: one billion people on the planet are hungry while two billion are obese or overweight. The guest editors, Marion Nestle and David Stuckler, then lay out a background on the role of Big Food in global health, and offer three competing views of how public health professionals can respond. Subsequent articles include: a comparison of soda companies' corporate social responsibility campaigns with those of the tobacco industry; an analysis of the rapid rise of Big Food sales in developing countries; an essay on food sovereignty and who holds power over food; views from South America and Africa on the displacement of traditional diets by the incursion of multinational food companies; and a perspective arguing against an uncritical acceptance of the food industry in health. View the Big Food Collection page at www.ploscollections.org/bigfood.
Image Credit: Original image by Todd Hryckowian at flickr.com, with enhancements by Lizzy Parisotto, PLoS.
Editorial
PLoS Medicine Series on Big Food: The Food Industry Is Ripe for Scrutiny
PLOS Medicine: published June 19, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001246
Essays
Food Sovereignty: Power, Gender, and the Right to Food
PLOS Medicine: published June 26, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001223
Why Human Health and Health Ethics Must Be Central to Climate Change Deliberations
PLOS Medicine: published June 5, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001229
Related Articles
Protecting Clinical Trial Participants and Protecting Data Integrity: Are We Meeting the Challenges?
PLOS Medicine: published June 12, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001234
Connecting the Global Climate Change and Public Health Agendas
PLOS Medicine: published June 5, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001227
Related Articles
Clinical Trials Have Gone Global: Is This a Good Thing?
PLOS Medicine: published June 12, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001228
Big Food, Food Systems, and Global Health
PLOS Medicine: published June 19, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001242
Health in Action
Point-of-Care Tests to Strengthen Health Systems and Save Newborn Lives: The Case of Syphilis
PLOS Medicine: published June 12, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001233
Policy Forums
Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns: How Do They Compare?
PLOS Medicine: published June 19, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001241
Research Articles
Global Health Governance and the Commercial Sector: A Documentary Analysis of Tobacco Company Strategies to Influence the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
PLOS Medicine: published June 26, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001249
Analysing Recent Socioeconomic Trends in Coronary Heart Disease Mortality in England, 2000–2007: A Population Modelling Study
PLOS Medicine: published June 12, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001237
A Multifaceted Intervention to Improve the Quality of Care of Children in District Hospitals in Kenya: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis
PLOS Medicine: published June 12, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001238
Tobacco Industry Manipulation of Tobacco Excise and Tobacco Advertising Policies in the Czech Republic: An Analysis of Tobacco Industry Documents
PLOS Medicine: published June 26, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001248
Nevirapine- Versus Lopinavir/Ritonavir-Based Initial Therapy for HIV-1 Infection among Women in Africa: A Randomized Trial
PLOS Medicine: published June 12, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001236
Reproductive Outcomes Following Ectopic Pregnancy: Register-Based Retrospective Cohort Study
PLOS Medicine: published June 19, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001243
Long-Term Risk of Incident Type 2 Diabetes and Measures of Overall and Regional Obesity: The EPIC-InterAct Case-Cohort Study
PLOS Medicine: published June 5, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001230
Bacterial Vaginosis Associated with Increased Risk of Female-to-Male HIV-1 Transmission: A Prospective Cohort Analysis among African Couples
PLOS Medicine: published June 26, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001251
Comparative Performance of Private and Public Healthcare Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review
PLOS Medicine: published June 19, 2012 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001244