NUTRITION

Healthy eating. On June 3, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), together with the Brazilian Ministry of Health, held in Brasilia the II Regional Meeting on Actions for the Prevention of Childhood Obesity. The event, which was attended by representatives of UNICEF, FAO, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay, among other Latin American countries, evaluated progress in the implementation of the PAHO Plan of Action for the Prevention of Obesity in Children and Adolescents 2014-2019. The representatives indicated that it is necessary to extend the deadlines of the plan in order to guarantee the execution of the actions that require more time for their implementation.

The countries attending the meeting reiterated the importance of the PAHO Plan of Action, which defines five strategic lines of action to help the countries of the region address the problems of overweight and obesity, including the regulation of marketing and food labelling. The event thus focused on the exchange of experiences regarding taxes on sugary beverages, the regulation of advertising of ultraprocessed foods and the implementation of front labeling.

FAO representatives stated that the main challenge “in the context of the globalization of obesity” is to urge countries to have an increased supply of healthy food and sustainable food systems. In their own words, there is a need to “reinvent food cultures”. At the same time, they highlighted the situation of people with less access to healthy food, saying “the most accessible foods are those that are most harmful to health, which have more sugar and sodium, the ultra-processed that are sold in supermarkets”.

Next steps

A large number of participants agreed on the importance of promoting regulations such as front labeling and food education. Various nutrition labelling bills are already progressing in the region’s congresses. It is expected that, within the framework of the Programme of Work for the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025), these regional meetings will provide the framework for policies recommended to governments based on the exchange of local experiences and international guidelines: for example, by advancing taxes on sugary beverages and supporting small farmers.