Fewer, bigger and better: Herbalife on how industry can help boost APAC nutrition programmes

16-Oct-2018 - Last updated on 16-Oct-2018 at 02:56 GMT

The firm was a corporate partner at the Responsible Business Forum on Sustainable Development 2018.

Industry can play a major role in improving nutritional problems in APAC, but when it comes to collaboration with governments and agencies, there needs to be a focus on a smaller number of projects that have a bigger overall impact.

That’s the view of Tod Gimbel, Herbalife’s vice president of government affairs for APAC.

He was speakeing at Responsible Business Forum on Sustainable Development 2018 in Singapore, which debated how industry, policymakers and NGOs could help meet the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG).

Gimbel drew attention to the company’s Nutrition Clubs. With over 90,000 Nutrition Clubs in operation around the world, each locally-run operation serves as a social enterprise, enabling access to health and nutrition products through individual serving portions at affordable prices.

He said Nutrition Club members are also trained to provide consumers with coaching to help them lead healthier lives through a combination of positive nutrition and healthy active lifestyles.

"Our unique business model, focusing on health-and-nutrition-centered grassroots engagement through our network of Nutrition Clubs, has enabled consumers in Asia Pacific and around the world to benefit from the power of positive nutrition, as well as nutrition education. This not only contributes to the UNSDG of Improving Global Health and Well-Being, it also provides work and opportunity to people from all over the world," said Stephen Conchie, senior vice president and managing director, Herbalife Nutrition Asia Pacific.

Partnership support

However, Gimbel said that more could be done to maximise the impact of nutritional interventions, especially around public-private partnerships.

“Around 20 years ago, this didn’t amount to much more than writing a cheque. But now companies such as our have the ability to help amplify these programmes through real partnerships,” he said.

“The challenge we face is that some governments can still be a little reluctant to work with industry. I understand that there may be some companies that governments wouldn’t want to work with, but there are many others out there who could play a positive role.

“The other challenge we gace is how we move programmes from being boutique to having big scale, We need bigger and better programmes because hundreds of small partnerships don’t impact the number of people as one really big one could.”