One of the important aspects of food security is the effect it has on children’s eating habits during their development stage.
Chief of Health and Sanitation for UNICEF Pacific, Mr Eliab Some says due to children’s high rate of activity, food security for children is very critical.
He highlighted to nurture young minds we need to provide proper education and support to parents as well as teachers to ensure that children have access and utilise healthy foods only.
Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama reiterated the need to educate our children about healthy life style and eating traditional foods other than being addicted to junk food.
“Our children are today and our future. They MUST be nurtured well to ensure sustainability of our efforts, our parenting and education system has a crucial role in teaching our children the value of a healthy lifestyle. We need to bring back home and school gardening to ensure our children plant and farm to sustain and maintain healthy and productive lifestyles,” PM Bainimarama said.
Mr Some pointed out that while law is one measure, raising the awareness, having appropriate standards and regulations on having healthy foods enable the food industry to provide healthy foods to our children.
“We need regulations and law as a standard so that anyone violating it we can show the evidence and they can take the corrective measures so food labeling, showing the nutritional information on packaging and than making our children and parents aware that all locations where meal is eaten we should eat healthy foods not junk foods,” Mr Some said.
In terms of food advertising for children, Mr Some said there is a need to redirect the aggressive marketing that presently targets children.
“The first step is really to educate parents to make healthy choices and also to regulate food that is marketed to children so that they can be wholesome meals containing balanced components of food.”
He added the media can actually play a very significant role by highlighting both the problem of obesity and also the solution.
“We have good food available but it is only the knowledge of both parents and teachers and other stakeholders to provide the children with those nutritious meals.”
Some of the other recommendations made by Mr Some to the Fiji Food Summit Committee were:
To have regulations to guide marketing foods directed to children
- is to empower parents and teachers association and to support them
- need manufactures to develop new products that are healthy for the existing products.
“We want the processors and manufacturers to reformulate them to make the healthy products and for the advertising sector really they should provide us with complete information and if they are targeting children they should make sure that no adverse of the unhealthy foods are included within the time children are watching TV or when we are communicating to the children.
“Schools can also take direct measures like not allowing direct sales of junk foods in school or around the school compound,” Dr Some said.