Strategies for NCD Risk Factors(cont...)

Standardize and Mandate Food Labeling Policy to Improve Knowledge and Awareness of Food Composition

Food-importing countries—especially the smaller ones—have little control over the exporting countries’ food quality and can suffer some adverse consequences. Food labeling is becoming more common, and accurate information is a first step to increase awareness of the nutritional components and calorie content for consumers.

As most of these food labels are established for larger countries, the smaller countries need to accept that it is not economically viable for their industry to label food.Trans fats are an example where labeling may assist health promotion efforts to improve the quality of dietary fats. Multinational food companies have created products that have advantages for them but

are harmful to the population.

While each country could tackle these issues alone, it is likely to be more effective for countries in South Asia to work together to develop strategies with multinational food companies to eliminate trans fats, and reduce unsaturated fats and salt in their products. However, the

first step is awareness of the trans fat content.

Food labeling can also assist national efforts to reduce obesity, a growing problem in South Asia among adults and, in some cases, children, through increasing awareness of calorie content. A major challenge for this effort is that significant chronic energy deficit and underweight persist at the same time.

Many of the initiatives to tackle obesity will require consideration of sociocultural contexts specific to each country while addressing nutritional content of foods and the importance of increasing the level of exercise. In addition, food labeling will complement awareness campaigns for healthy foods.The rationale for a regional strategy and collaboration for food labeling is that it provides both a much stronger negotiating position for countries vis-à-vis the food industry, as well as economies of scale (in that that similar labels can be used for several countries).