How food and beverage companies leveraged the great recession: lessons for the COVID-19 pandemic.

### Summary box The COVID-19 pandemic might present opportunities for transnational food and beverage companies to further consolidate their power within global markets.1 2 Some companies, for example, seem to be currying favour of governments, civil society organisations and communities by handing out free ultraprocessed products to the food insecure through heavily branded philanthropic initiatives.3 Other companies have used the pandemic to forge stronger alliances with government and civil society actors, which may water down or even silence criticism about the negative health impacts resulting from the consumption of their products, particularly ultraprocessed ones.3 This was epitomised by the WHO Foundation’s recent decision to accept funding from Nestle, despite Nestle’s ongoing breaches of the WHO Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.4 The company’s donations for COVID-19 aid even got a ‘thank you’ from WHO on social media.5 One need look no farther than the last global crisis, the 2007–2008 Great Recession, to understand the food and beverage industry’s behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis. It is notable that the top three publicly traded food and beverage companies emerged from the …