Academics at Trinity College Dublin’s Business School have created an unusual calendar for 2026, one that exposes how ultra-processed food and alcohol brands have manufactured "occasions" throughout the year designed to boost consumption.
The calendar's August page features a framework developed by Professor Anna Gilmore and colleagues to illustrate the systemic nature of the commercial determinants of health, as detailed in The Lancet Series. In addition to her role as Co-Director of the Centre for 21st Century Public Health at the University of Bath, Professor Gilmore is an Adjunct Professor at Trinity College Dublin's School of Medicine.
“When corporations harm health and the planet, they don’t bear the costs of those harms – instead governments and the public do. This allows corporations to make excess profits, consistent with clear evidence that public sector wealth is steadily declining while private sector wealth increases 1,” says Professor Gilmore.
Making the invisible visible
The calendar stems from research by May van Schalkwyk, Research Fellow in the University of Edinburgh and Norah Campbell, Associate Professor at Trinity Business School, which analysed PR magazines to understand how brands employ sophisticated strategies to increase consumption frequency, shortening cycles so that monthly treats become weekly, weekly becomes daily, and daily becomes multiple times per day.
"Sure, every one of these campaigns is light-hearted and fun, but all these harmless little treats battle 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, to remind us, entice us, guilt-trip us to consume. Every moment, mundane and significant, is colonised by this battle of the brands," says Dr Campbell.
From "pre-Halloween" to daily advent
The research uncovered how industries extend seasonal periods to extract more sales. Christmas becomes "Advent," requiring daily consumption for a month. Halloween spawns "Pre-Halloween" and even "Summer'ween." Industries also attach themselves to existing cultural moments, such as Movember, World Kindness Day, and Irish Language Week, transforming non-food occasions into consumption opportunities.
"This normalised environment allows them to influence policy and regulations, creating a cycle that makes populations sicker with governments left to pick up the tab," says Dr Campbell.
Noting how Professor Gilmore's work has been transformative in re-framing the activities of unhealthy commodity industries, she adds: "Anna’s research is fundamentally showing that seeing alcohol and UPF industries as merely 'selling products' misses the extent of their power in politics and their dominance in cultures.”
A call for systemic change
The calendar has been sent to 230 Irish politicians with a clear visual message that existing voluntary codes of good marketing in Ireland are insufficient. Instead, the researchers advocate for proven interventions: advertising bans like those implemented for tobacco; expanded sugar and alcohol taxes with revenue directed to community health; ending public subsidies for alcohol and junk food brands while subsidising unprocessed foods; and crowding in cooperative business models.
The calendar is a collaboration between Trinity College Dublin, Alcohol Action Ireland, the Climate and Health Alliance, the Irish Heart Foundation, Irish Doctors for the Environment, and the University of Galway, demonstrating the breadth of concern about commercial determinants of health.
As the researchers conclude: "Another world is possible".
- World Inequality Lab (2022) World Inequality Report 2022. Paris: World Inequality Lab, p. 14.