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Ultraprocessed-food manufacturers have proposed product reformulation as a key strategy to tackle obesity. In determining the impact of reformulation on population dietary behaviors, policy makers often depend on data provided by these manufacturers. Where such data are "gifted" to regulators, there may be an implicit expectation of reciprocity that adversely influences nutrition policies. The authors aimed to assess Europe's industry-led reformulation strategy in five countries deploying critical policy studies as an approach. They found that interim results on industry-led food reformulation did not meet the countries' targets. Information asymmetries exist between food industry and policy makers: the latter are not privy to marketing intelligence and must instead rely on data that are voluntarily donated by food industry actors, which represent a distorted snippet of the marketing intelligence system from whence they came. Because these data indeed bear all the hallmarks of a gift, regulatory and public health authorities operate within a gift economy. The implications of this "data-gift economy" are strategic delay and the need to set goals when the field is not visible. Ultimately, this could diminish the implementation of public health nutrition policies that run counter to the commercial interests of ultraprocessed-food producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Childhood obesity is influenced by myriad individual, societal and environmental factors that are not typically reflected in current interventions. Socio-ecological conditions evolve and require ongoing monitoring in terms of assessing their influence on child health. The aim of this study was to identify and prioritise indicators deemed relevant by public health authorities for monitoring and evaluating childhood obesity interventions.Method: A three-round Delphi Panel composed of experts from regions across Europe, with a remit in childhood obesity intervention, were asked to identify indicators that were a priority in their efforts to address childhood obesity in their respective jurisdictions. In Round 1, 16 panellists answered a series of open-ended questions to identify the most relevant indicators concerning the evaluation and subsequent monitoring of interventions addressing childhood obesity, focusing on three main domains: built environments, dietary environments, and health inequalities. In Rounds 2 and 3, panellists rated the importance of each of the identified indicators within these domains, and the responses were then analysed quantitatively.Results: Twenty-seven expert panellists were invited to participate in the study. Of these, 16/27 completed round 1 (5 9% response rate), 14/16 completed round 2 (87.5% response rate), and 8/14 completed the third and final round (57% response rate). Consensus (defined as > 70% agreement) was reached on a total of 45 of the 87 indicators (49%) across three primary domains (built and dietary environments and health inequalities), with 100% consensus reached for 5 of these indicators (6%).Conclusion: Forty-five potential indicators were identified, pertaining primarily to the dietary environment, built environment and health inequalities. These results have important implications more widely for evaluating interventions aimed at childhood obesity reduction and prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity is a complex disease and its prevalence depends on multiple factors related to the local socioeconomic, cultural and urban context of individuals. Many obesity prevention strategies and policies, however, are horizontal measures that do not depend on context-specific evidence. In this paper we present an overview of BigO (http://bigoprogram.eu), a system designed to collect objective behavioral data from children and adolescent populations as well as their environment in order to support public health authorities in formulating effective, context-specific policies and interventions addressing childhood obesity. We present an overview of the data acquisition, indicator extraction, data exploration and analysis components of the BigO system, as well as an account of its preliminary pilot application in 33 schools and 2 clinics in four European countries, involving over 4,200 participants.