Last month Fiji’s Health Ministry issued another warning to the nation’s food manufacturers to reduce sugar and salt content in packaged foods. The second warning was issued after the administration found that the earlier warning went unheeded.
Health Minister Neil Sharma said the ministry had approached the food industry to reformulate and re-label their products adding that the health ministry is targeting Trans fat (or Trans fatty acids) produced food items – a major contributor to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the country as well as the rest of the Pacific Island countries.
The Fijian administration has now gone a step further. It has confirmed that it plans to impose a “fat tax” – something which the Scandinavian nation of Denmark has already done. But the Fijian administration has clarified that its own tax would be based on food ingredient parameters not necessarily the same as those of Denmark – local and regional realities will be considered.
Pacific leaders were among several of their world counterparts when they committed last month to taking action on the rapid growth of obesity-related illnesses at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Meanwhile, Fiji’s National Food and Nutrition Centre is focusing on the more general message “Choose and Prepare food and drinks with less salt, sugar, fat and oil”, which is one of the 10 key messages in the Food and Health Guidelines for Fiji.
Once a condition in wealthy nations, obesity is now more prevalent in poorer nations because of the runaway growth in cheap processed, packaged foods laden with salt and sugar.
A slew of lifestyle diseases including obesity have reached epidemic proportions all around the Pacific Islands region – a fact acknowledged by global development organisations. The situation is exacerbated because of the lack of healthcare resources and the high costs of treatment.