ArticleJournal of epidemiology and community health2017
'Nothing can be done until everything is done': the use of complexity arguments by food, beverage, alcohol and gambling industries.
Article in Journal of epidemiology and community health, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Gambling Marketing Strategies and the Internet: What Do We Know? A Systematic Review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Conducting cross-sectoral collaborative research for food system transformation: learnings from a qualitative evaluation study.Health research policy and systems · 2026Article
- Corporate Political Strategies and Discursive Frames of the Gambling Industry in Finland's Gambling Policy Reform.Nordisk alkohol- & narkotikatidskrift : NAT · 2026Article
- Reviewing ecosystems of evidence: synthesising the evidence on the commercial determinants of health from a complex systems perspective.Systematic reviews · 2026Article
- Commercial determinants of health-a scoping review of research 'made in Germany'.European journal of public health · 2026Article
- Power and entitlement: Addressing the structural drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- The International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research (ISFAR) critiques of alcohol research: Promoting health benefits and downplaying harms.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Attractive but Harmful Commodities: Looking Across Unhealthy Commodities to Improve Public Health Responses.Public health challenges · 2025Article
- Article
- The role of policy actors' belief systems and interests in framing public health nutrition problems: a case study of obesity in Australia.Public health nutrition · 2025Article
- Labelling the debate: a thematic analysis of alcohol industry submissions to the EU consultation on alcohol health warnings in Ireland.Globalization and health · 2025Article
- Article
- Obesity and Lifestyle Drift: Framing Analysis of Calorie Menu Labelling in England in News Media.International journal of health policy and management · 2025Article
- Acting on the Commercial Determinants of Health.Health promotion international · 2024Article
- Lifestyle interventions for cardiometabolic health.Nature medicine · 2024Review
- Unveiling viewpoints on national food environment policies in the Dutch newspaper discourse: an interpretative media content analysis.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2024Article
- Making Big Business Everybody's Business: Aboriginal leaders' perspectives on commercial activities influencing aboriginal health in Victoria, Australia.Globalization and health · 2024Article
- Parliamentary reaction to the announcement and implementation of the UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy: applied thematic analysis of 2016-2020 parliamentary debates.Public health nutrition · 2024Article
- Retailer Responses to Public Consultations on the Adoption of Takeaway Management Zones Around Schools: A Longitudinal Qualitative Analysis.International journal of health policy and management · 2024Article
- Towards a conceptual framework for the prevention of gambling-related harms: Findings from a scoping review.PloS one · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCorporations use a range of strategies to dispute their role in causing public health harms and to limit the scope of effective public health interventions. This is well documented in relation to the activities of the tobacco industry, but research on other industries is less well developed. We therefore analysed public statements and documents from four unhealthy commodity industries to investigate whether and how they used arguments about complexity in this way.
methodsWe analysed alcohol, food, soda and gambling industry documents and websites and minutes of reports of relevant health select committees, using standard document analysis methods.
resultsTwo main framings were identified: (i) these industries argue that aetiology is complex, so individual products cannot be blamed; and (ii) they argue that population health measures are 'too simple' to address complex public health problems. However, in this second framing, there are inherent contradictions in how industry used 'complexity', as their alternative solutions are generally not, in themselves, complex.
conclusionThe concept of complexity, as commonly used in public health, is also widely employed by unhealthy commodity industries to influence how the public and policymakers understand health issues. It is frequently used in response to policy announcements and in response to new scientific evidence (particularly evidence on obesity and alcohol harms). The arguments and language may reflect the existence of a cross-industry 'playbook', whose use results in the undermining of effective public health policies - in particular the undermining of effective regulation of profitable industry activities that are harmful to the public's health.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.