A Toolkit for UNICEF Country Offices and National Committees to Assess Elements of the Food Retail Environment that Influence Consumption Patterns, and to Provide Recommendations for Policymakers and
LRPS-2019-9149398
A Toolkit for UNICEF Country Offices and National Committees to Assess Elements of the Food Retail Environment that Influence Consumption Patterns, and to Provide Recommendations for Policymakers and Private Sector Actors Seeking to Shape the Retail Environment for Improved Childhood Nutrition
UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND (UNICEF)
IMPORTANT - ESSENTIAL INFORMATION
The reference LRPS-2019-9149398 must be shown in ALL e-mail subject.
The Request for Proposal for Services form must be used when replying to this invitation.
You are welcome to enclose your own specifications, if necessary.
Proposals must be received by latest 23:55 PM (Panama time) on June 16 2019. Proposal received after the stipulated date and time will be invalidated.
Proposals must be sent to above e-mail address ONLY to the following email address:
lacrobids@unicef.org.
Proposals sent to other addresses or sent by other means will be invalidated, even if received before the stipulated deadline.
Due to the high volume of communications, UNICEF will not issue confirmation as to receipt of your proposals.
It is important that you read all the provisions of the Request for Proposal for Services to ensure that you understand and comply with the UNICEF's requirements. Note that failure to submit compliant proposals may result in invalidation of your proposal.
-PART I – PURPOSE OF THIS REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS FOR SERVICES
Background and Context
· Over the past 20 years, much has changed in terms of children´s nutrition, and much of it for the better. Between 1990 and 2015, the prevalence of stunting in children worldwide declined by 40%, with much of that improvement occurring this century. Despite this, around 155 million children worldwide still suffer from stunting, and progress remains elusive in certain parts of the world, notably sub-Saharan Africa.
· However, alongside the decline in undernutrition, there’s a worrying new trend – an increase in the number of overweight and/or obese children. Between 1990 and 2015, while the global number of stunted children declined by 22%, the global number of overweight children increased by 33%. Among older children and young people, the trends are even more noticeable: The number of 0-to-20-year-olds who are overweight and obese rose from 11 million worldwide in 1975 to 124 million in 2016.
· We now live in a world where more and more families can satisfy children’s and mothers’ basic energy needs. However, many still struggle to satisfy their nutritional needs, whether it’s in the child’s first 1000 days or, later on, in childhood and adolescence.
· As cheap high-calorie, low-nutrient food products become ever more widely available and heavily promoted, we need to increasingly think about the quality of what children are consuming, and how that contributes to their ability (not just to survive but) to thrive; that is, to grow and develop to their full potential.
· To address each of these points we need to talk about food.
· Finding the answers requires a truly frank look at today’s food system, including its food environments.
- The WHO and the NCD Commission have already identified the “best buys” from reformulation, called for better labelling, limitations on marketing, and taxes the incentivize healthier choices.
· As such, UNICEF has been developing a food systems agenda as a means of systemically addressing today’s malnutrition crisis.
· One area within this larger UNICEF agenda includes better understanding the retail environment. The retail environment is a critical component of the food system. Several studies demonstrate how it has a major influence over adult and children dietary preferences which in turn contribute to their nutritional status. This environment has experienced an acute transformation in developing countries during the last decades. In one hand, ultra-processed foods with high levels of unhealthy ingredients are becoming an essential part of the retail environments and diet, and in the other, the growing presence of big chains of supermarkets selling these products are becoming a space where marketing strategies to promote these products are omnipresent. At the same time farmer’s markets and stores for locally produced basic foods and ingredients are diminishing in number and options.
· As such, UNICEF offices in Latin America recently concluded studies in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico specifically assessing how product pricing, promotion, and marketing within supermarkets (the major food source for urban areas) influences consumer purchases and consequently children’s diets and nutritional health.
· The findings were used by UNICEF LACRO to develop recommendations for policymakers and companies and to advocate for the importance of: a) public health policies that protect children from exposure to marketing strategies promoting unhealthy foods, and b) regulations for packaging and the placement sugary beverages, sweet and salty snacks, ready-to-eat cereals and other unhealthy ultra-processed foods.
· Other UNICEF offices are now interested in undertaking similar retail studies in their own regions.
· As such, UNICEF is interested in developing a tool to guide them in doing so.
- This toolkit would build on what was done in Latin America by formalizing the methodology so that is can be applied in, and adapted to, different settings (e.g. urban and less urban areas, lower and higher income settings, different geographic regions, as well as diverse types of retail environments). The toolkit should also include case studies and guidance on the development of recommendations.
- The case studies would highlight best practices and lessons learned from piloting the Toolkit in a number of countries.
Key assumptions:
· Food environments that facilitate healthier choices contribute to the prevention of malnutrition
- Retailers and other commercial food outlets make decisions about the nutritional quality, labelling, marketing, availability, access, and prices of food that they offer to consumers
- These elements of the food environments strongly determine consumer’s food choices and preferences
- Consumers’ food choices and preferences influence children’s diets and preferences
- Children’s diets and preferences influence their nutritional health
- Children’s nutritional health influence their life-long health, including risk of stunting, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cognitive development, and much more.
- These risk factors have been associated with poorer quality of life, earlier mortality rates, and even disadvantage earning potential.
- Commercial food retailers (e.g. supermarkets, hypermarkets, bodegas, corner stores etc.) are people’s dominant source of food in most parts of the world.
· Healthier purchase made when shopping at food retail outlets is indicative of healthier consumption patterns by those consumers and their children.
· Marketing decisions within food retail settings is a powerful means of influencing consumers food choices. Marketing in the retail environment ranges from: the colors, shapes (e.g. dinosaur-shaped products) and images, product portions (e.g. king size, duo packs), in-pack and on-pack promotions (gifts, puzzles, vouchers); on-shelf displays, displays at check-outs, pay-point, pricing incentives, loyalty schemes, free samples and tastings; and other forms of in-store marketing.
· Government regulation and corporate policies determine marketing within the retail environment.
· UNICEF can generate evidence and create advocacy messages that advance government regulation and corporate policies towards those that incentivize healthier consumer choices through instore marketing.