Global nutrition supporting our purpose

As a world-leading food ingredient company, it was very clear to us that supporting healthy living should be one of the pillars of our purpose that we live by – and we have set some ambitious targets to help us put our purpose into practice.

No matter where you look, societies and governments are facing significant food- and health-related challenges, and these have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The incidence of obesity and diabetes, and concerns about digestive health, are increasing rapidly. And yet, while obesity is now responsible for more deaths than hunger, one in nine people in the world struggle to find enough nutritious food to eat every day.

At Tate & Lyle we are committed to be part of the solution to these problems – and to help our customers create health and wellness solutions of their own. Our goal is not just to feed people, but to feed them well:

• Our expertise in sweetening, texture and fibre fortification provides consumers with healthier and tastier choices when they eat and drink.
• We help create products with fewer calories, less sugar and fat, and with added fibre.

We’ve set ourselves some ambitious targets, including:

Improving nutrition:

By 2025, through our low-/no-calorie sweeteners and fibres, we’ll have helped remove 9 million tonnes of sugar from people’s diets, equivalent to 36 trillion calories.

Encouraging balanced lifestyles:

By 2025, we’ll have helped improve the lives of over 250,000 people by supporting programmes that promote healthier lifestyles and activities.

We work to help consumers understand the role that diet, physical exercise and mental wellbeing can have on their health and we support many health educational programmes across the world, promoting nutrition education in partnership with our customers, health professionals and academic researchers.

Here are two examples of how we are living our purpose:

Latin America:

In 2020, over 6,000 healthcare professionals, customers and consumers enrolled in our free online education programme on the role fibre plays in a healthy diet launched jointly with Nestlé in Brazil. Entitled: ‘Dietary fibres: benefits that go beyond gut health’, the course content, including videos, presentations, and expert Q&As, was developed and delivered by three nutrition academics from leading institutions in Brazil.

Europe:

In 2020, Tate & Lyle provided an educational grant to support a themed issue of Nutrition Bulletin (a publication of the British Nutrition Foundation). This special issue published a series of papers and reviews around the role of reformulation for public health. Topics included the role of sugar and saturated fat reduction, fibre enrichment, and plant-based protein. The research papers were authored by academics from renowned global institutions such as AgResearch New Zealand, University of Massachusetts and APC Microbiome Ireland.

With the launch of the Tate & Lyle Nutrition Centre we’re taking our purpose a step further. It is part of our investment in innovation. Our teams of food and nutrition scientists are continually researching and testing ingredients and applications to meet customer expectations and public health goals. Through our commitment to supporting healthy living our customers can benefit from innovations that are inspired by our purpose and we are helping to support healthier lives of consumers everywhere.

About the author

Dr Kavita Karnik is Global Head of Nutrition and Regulatory Affairs at Tate & Lyle. She leads a strategic nutrition science research and education programme, and is involved in new product development, providing credible scientific support for new and existing products. She is also responsible for exploring open innovation opportunities that are of strategic relevance to Tate & Lyle’s current business and future expansion.