Georgetown Economic Services was hired by a coalition of national food and beverage manufacturers committed to promoting active and healthy living. The coalition wanted to measure collectively, the amount of calories the member companies reduced from the marketplace over a 5 year period. Members collectively pledged to remove 1 trillion calories from the marketplace by 2012, and 1.5 trillion by 2015.
GES devised a methodology to count the calories using commercially available data. This was a first effort of its kind and posed many challenges as new territory was charted. GES found that the industry exceeded their pledge to remove 1.5 trillion calories by more than 400%, and three years ahead of schedule. The 6.4 trillion calorie decline translated into a reduction of 78 calories per person in the US per day. An independent evaluation to verify the results was conducted by the School of Public Health at UNC, and was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. UNC’s studies on the initiative were published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
