The Demand-Supply (False) Dilemma: Should consumers or food companies take responsibility?

A man from FrieslandCampina once shared with me about the time he tried to introduce healthier options in the Asian market, specifically unsweetened fresh milk.

The Asian market is flooded with sugar-sweetened flavored milk. Having grown up with fresh unsweetened milk in Europe, he was pretty disgusted by the sickeningly sweet stuff that his company sold in Asia. He was also aware of the health implications of adding sugar to milk–an especially worrisome thing since it’s mostly consumed by kids. So he pushed for no-added sugar milk to be introduced into the Asian market. He recalled hoping to slowly phase out the sweetened milk brands.

Well, it was not that big a surprise that nobody bought these products.

So FrieslandCampina had no choice but to withdraw that from the market and let the sweetened versions remain.

The “dilemma”: Who is to blame?

This story is what I call the demand-supply (false) dilemma of food.

As one of my bosses noted, professionals of nutrition and public health are in a sticky situation where they have very little power in advancing their goal of improving people’s health. On one hand, people will eat what they want to eat, and on the other, the food industry will produce what they want to produce. Nutrition and public health professionals can only influence (i.e. nag) at both parties.

And here is where it gets messy. Food companies such as FrieslandCampina have tried to make their products healthier by cutting sugar, but this has led to a less than enthusiastic response from consumers. Further, food companies have to collectively reduce the sugar levels in their products for sugar reduction initiatives to work. If only one or a few companies do it, their healthier-but-less-tasty options will simply lose out to their competition who appease their customers’ tastebuds. It’s almost inevitable that these socially responsible food companies return to the status quo of producing reliable profit-generating unhealthier products, for as long as consumers demand them.

It looks like consumers simply need to have the self-control to refrain from eating all this unhealthy junk food. But, consumer tastes and preferences are also influenced by what is available in the environment.

I was just having a conversation with some friends yesterday, on how difficult it is to eat healthy sometimes because there are simply few affordable options outside the home. I strongly believe that the widespread availability of unhealthy options is all the more detrimental for children because food tastes and preferences are acquired in our early years. Exposing children to these sugary, salty and fatty foods at a young age sets their expectations of what food is supposed to taste like–which leads to the inevitable demand for even more sugary, salty, and fatty foods. 

The tension between consumer and industry responsibility is a sorry chicken-and-egg situation. Is it the fault of consumers who don’t know how to demand the healthful foods so that food companies can react accordingly? Or is it food companies’s fault for creating an unhealthy food environment that make it difficult for consumers to make better food choices? This dilemma is probably not unique to food, and I’m sure there is some economic principle or theory to model this phenomenon (would appreciate if someone can enlighten me about this).

I also think this is a false dilemma where it’s not the sole fault of either parties. But how do we find the middle ground?

As someone who has personally changed my dietary habits, I believe that as consumers, we can, with sheer willpower and discipline, overcome the unhealthy food environment that we are oftentimes in. It takes a lot of time and conscious efforts, but it’s possible. Granted, you need to plan and prepare for your multiple daily encounters with food–just imagine how many times we eat in a day and the corresponding effort required!–but it’s possible. And eventually all the effort hopefully translates into good habits. 

However, I am aware that I come from a relatively financially-secure background. What about those who have less resources (whether time, money, or even information) to dedicate to this seemingly uphill task?

I won’t pretend to know the answers. Just needed to get these thoughts out of my head.