Sep 23, 2013

Carolina Population Center Faculty Fellow Barry Popkin is featured in an article by UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health describing his role in the launch of the Bellagio Declaration last week. Below is an excerpt. Read the full article here.

Bellagio Declaration asks for protection from Big Food, Big Soda lobbying

Public health and nutrition scientists are calling for greater efforts to protect healthy food policies from being undermined by the lobbying forces of multinational food corporations, or “Big Food” and “Big Soda,” as they have been called.

The call to action, known as “The Bellagio Declaration,” was made at the International Congress on Nutrition in Granada, Spain, this week. The declaration came out of an earlier meeting on the progress of obesity prevention efforts in low- and middle-income countries, which was held this summer in Bellagio, Italy.

The Bellagio Declaration calls upon governments and other organizations to take specific actions to counteract the influence of Big Food, which successfully has blocked healthy food policies in many countries.