Corporate political activity and evidence of policy capture in national obesity prevention policies (2000–2025): a global systematic review

Governments across high-, middle-, and low-income countries have adopted regulatory interventions, including sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes, front-of-pack nutrition labelling (FOPNL), restrictions on marketing unhealthy foods to children, and school nutrition standards to address rising obesity and diet-related non-communicable disease burdens. These measures face organized resistance from food and beverage industry actors through corporate political activity (CPA). While country-level studies have documented individual CPA tactics, no global synthesis has applied a unified taxonomic framework to classify CPA mechanisms and link them to measurable policy capture outcomes across the policy cycle. A systematic review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines. PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched for studies published between January 2000 and November 2025, supplemented by grey literature from international health organization repositories and government databases. Two reviewers screened 1,115 records; 41 studies from 25 countries were included. Quality was appraised using CASP, ROBINS-I, and CERQual. CPA strategies were classified using a validated four-domain taxonomy. Included studies covered 25 countries across six WHO regions: 37% from high-income countries, 41% from upper-middle-income countries, 7% from lower-middle-income countries, and 15% from multi-country settings. Eighty-seven discrete CPA mechanism instances were documented. Stakeholder engagement strategies were the most prevalent domain (47 of 87 documented instances, 54%), with direct lobbying documented in 29 studies (71%), coalition building in 23 studies (56%), and revolving-door exploitation in 9 studies (22%). Legal and regulatory strategies were present in 24% of studies and financial strategies in 20% of studies. CPA was concentrated at the policy formulation and adoption stages. Policy delay (39%) was the most commonly documented capture outcome, followed by regulatory weakening (22%), industry-aligned amendment (15%), policy dilution (10%), repeal or defeat (7%), and implementation modification (7%). Overall evidence quality was rated as moderate confidence. Food and beverage industry CPA produces progressive dilution, systematic delay and below-benchmark weakening of national obesity prevention policies across income groups and policy cycle stages. Mandatory transparency registries, statutory conflict-of-interest frameworks, and frame-literacy capacity building represent the most evidence-supported governance responses identified by this review. PROSPERO CRD42026132761.