The appetite for ESG initiatives, so we are told, is on the wane. So, are you a winner or a waner? By David Burrows.   

The food industry is at a “tipping point” due to changes in demographics, consumer preferences and scientific advances, said the boss of Danone this week. “You just have to look at demographics – there are more elderly people not in an amazing state [of health] and you look at the impact of food on health, and look at the science,” Antoine de Saint-Affrique told the Financial Times.

His pitch was actually aimed at the booming market for food and drink that – so the claims (and increasingly the science) go – benefit your gut health. These may not only boost digestive health, either, with links to immunity, appetite and weight regulation, brain health (including mood and sleep) and more.

The headlines and his observations got fingers tapping on social media. “Population health is becoming an economic priority for businesses,” noted Louis Bedwell at the Future Food Movement. “Governments are turning the ship to focus on prevention [versus] treatment. Consumers are linking diet more directly with wellbeing. The science connecting food and health outcomes is advancing fast,” he added.

This is all good, positive stuff. A sign that things are moving in the direction many of us hoped. 

Bedwell’s next point, in particular, caught my eye though. “Most food companies grew by getting bigger, faster and more efficient. That model still matters, but it’s no longer enough to stay competitive. Growth is starting to come from a different place – from the ability to prove health impact, work with regulators and apply science in ways that build real trust.”

The world’s big food and drink companies have always wanted to become bigger, but shareholders are starting to question this. As the FT also reported this month: Nestlé and the likes of Unilever have all built their businesses on ‘bigger is better’, but that model “might be reaching an inflection point” as multinationals take a knife to their low-growth brands. 

Whether this industry’s behemoths are ‘too bloated’ for financiers is one thing. Their environmental and social impacts should remain under scrutiny, too – perhaps more than ever as some use the ‘greenlash’ that began with the Trump administration and continues to ripple across the world as an excuse to rein in their more responsible business initiatives; the type of projects that ensure bigger can also mean better. 

Only a fool would invest in a food company that isn’t preparing to mitigate and adapt to climate change, for example, wouldn’t they? The links between climate and cash have washed through the food industry this past few months, thanks to more extreme weather and a battering for harvests here, there and everywhere.

The Global Tipping Points Report 2025, released earlier this month, showed that Earth has reached the first of several climate-related tipping points, for example. The Climate Change Committee has also just written to the UK government warning that Britain must urgently prepare for global warming of at least 2°C by 2050. 

The CCC explained that efforts to adapt to these changes must span public health, food security, infrastructure resilience, protection of cities and towns from extreme weather disruption, maintenance of public services and climate-resilient economic growth. “The people of this country are already experiencing the impacts of a changing climate, and we owe it to them to prepare, and to help them prepare, for what we know is ahead.”

That goes for food companies too. They, more than anyone, know what lies ahead and it isn’t pretty. ‘Resilience’ is the watchword among the food sector this year, yet there is a reticence to really explain this, warts and all. 

That could be changing too. As a group of industry whistleblowers warned earlier this year, many of the current plans amount to “wishful thinking”. Their memo, as Footprint reported, offered a real sense of urgency, coupled with more than a pinch of despair.

“[….] we have reached a moment of threat to food security like none other we have seen,” they warned in the memo published on the group’s behalf by Inside Track, an organisation that uses inside knowledge to push critical industries towards a just transition. “Yield, quality and predictability of supply from many of our most critical sourcing regions is not something we will be able to rely upon over the coming years.”

What made the whistleblowers’ warning particularly alarming is that many of the food system risks identified in research are already manifesting – and much faster than predicted, noted Elta Smith, a food policy researcher and writer at the time of the memo. “We would be foolish not to heed their warning. The security of our food supply, and by extension our national security, depends on immediate action to address the vulnerabilities they identify,” she explained.

Are we ready to confront the climate and biodiversity crises? A great place to start would be deep, lasting reductions to methane, a powerful gas that, if minimised in a major way, can put the brake on climate change and temperature rises. Food production is a major source of the gas, in particular through cow burps, so food companies have a responsibility to control and curb it. 

As we approach the next set of COP climate talks, scheduled for next month, it may be time to see if their commitments to climate are hot air or hot stuff.