RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Landscape analysis of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing metrics for consumer nutrition and health in the food and beverage sector JF BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health JO BMJ Nutrition FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd SP 139 OP 152 DO 10.1136/bmjnph-2022-000600 VO 6 IS 2 A1 O'Hearn, Meghan A1 Reedy, Julia A1 Robinson, Ella A1 Economos, Christina A1 Wong, John B A1 Sacks, Gary A1 Mozaffarian, Dariush YR 2023 UL http://nutrition.bmj.com/content/6/2/139.abstract AB Introduction The private sector plays a critical role in influencing food choices and health outcomes of consumers. Among private sector actors, investors are a powerful yet underutilised stakeholder for driving scalable public health impact. There are systems to facilitate investors’ involvement, notably environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, which is well placed to include an assessment of business risks to social well-being. However, nutrition efforts within the ESG agenda (ESG-Nutrition) are nascent. We aimed to critically assess the strength of existing ESG-Nutrition metrics to advance the science of measuring business impacts on consumer nutrition and health.Methods ESG-Nutrition metrics were extracted from eight ESG frameworks and categorised across four domains: product portfolio healthfulness; product distribution and equity; product marketing and labelling; and nutrition-related governance. The strength of each metric was evaluated and scored 1–3 (best), independently by two researchers, based on six attributes: materiality, objectivity, alignment, activity, resolution and verifiability. The total score (range 6–18) and intercorrelation for each attribute was calculated.Results Across 529 metrics, most related to product marketing and labelling (n=230, 43.5%), followed by product healthfulness (n=126, 23.8%), nutrition-related governance (n=108, 20.4%) and product distribution and equity (n=65, 12.3%). Across all metrics, average total score was 10.94 (1.58), with average attribute scoring highest for verifiability (mean: 2.36 (SD: 0.57)), objectivity (2.11 (0.61)) and materiality (2.01 (0.68)) and lowest for activity (1.83 (0.74)), alignment (1.37 (0.67)) and resolution (1.26 (0.65)). Most intercorrelations were null, suggesting attributes were measuring distinct characteristics of each metric. Significant heterogeneity across domains and frameworks was also observed.Conclusions This research identifies a range of nutrition-related metrics used in ESG frameworks with respect to food companies, but with substantial heterogeneity in relevant nutrition domains covered and strength of each metric. Efforts are required to improve the quality of metrics across frameworks, establish standardised reporting and align these with investor priorities.Data are available in a public, open access repository. Data (ie, metrics) in this analysis are all publicly available from the website of each respective ESG framework (ESG global reporting standards and food sector-specific accountability initiatives/indices). These have all been referenced and cited throughout the text.