The key ingredient to building a healthier, well-nourished and a more sustainable Asia, is simple yet complex – partnerships. For partnerships to be established and scaled, there is a need to establish a common agenda across agencies and to develop a sensitive approach that is localised and nutrition-specific to encourage the adoption of healthy lifestyles.
In June 2017, the Asia Roundtable on Food Innovation for Improved Nutrition (ARoFIIN), in collaboration with the Health Promotion Board (HPB) and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), launched a report titled “Tackling Obesity in ASEAN”, to guide policymakers, health organisations and the food & beverage industry in taking on the rising threat in the region.
Indonesia’s economic growth over the past three decades has produced a burgeoning middle class that is increasingly urbanised and sedentary. The prevalence of overweight/obesity is emerging in Indonesia, with 24.5% of its adult population overweight and 5.7% obese. On the other end of the spectrum, 37.2% of children under the age of five are stunted, which also increases the risks of developing NCDs when they are older.
Even as economies become increasingly affluent, and many can afford to feed their families with greater ability than in the past, there is a nagging worry that children will grow up to be less healthy than their parents. Today’s sedentary pursuits are displacing active lifestyles, and such physical inactivity has been a contributing factor to the growing health challenges around the world.
Obesity prevalence increased by 28 per cent on average in the ASEAN-6 in a four-year period under review, according to a report on obesity released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
Despite significant progress in recent decades, malnutrition is still a huge barrier to children’s health and development around the world. There is a demand and opportunity for food innovation for improved nutrition across global markets, including low- and middle-income ones, and the private sector has a critical role to play in innovating for affordable, accessible and appealing nutrition for all.
The fight against malnutrition requires vision, investments and tenacity, to improve the health of entire generations of malnourished children around the world. We need innovation and evidence-based research, through multi-stakeholder collaboration, to bring together the areas of food production, value chain management, policy-making and consumer behaviour, in order to maximise our efforts to tackle malnutrition and food insecurity.
Asia Roundtable on Food Innovation for Improved Nutrition (ARoFIIN), together with the Health Promotion Board (HPB) and Save the Children, hosted a roundtable dialogue that gathered stakeholders from academia, civil society, industry and government, to address how various sectors can collaborate on initiatives that drive nutrition literacy, to build a supportive environment that promotes healthy lifestyles among children in Asia.
Speaking with the Asia Roundtable on Food Innovation for Improved Nutrition (ARoFIIN), Dr Feisul Idzwan Mustapha, public health physician with the Ministry of Health, Malaysia, shared about government plans to encourage healthy lifestyles in Malaysia, and the importance of partnership in effecting behaviour change among consumers.
As part of efforts to tackle obesity in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ARoFIIN hosted a series of in-country workshops in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines last year, gathering multi-sectoral experts who identified localised, country-specific interventions that focused on nutrition education to children.
Thailand faces the second highest obesity prevalence rate in Southeast Asia at 8.5 per cent, while cardiovascular diseases and stroke were identified as the leading causes of death by 2011 in the country. A three-pronged approach that aims to communicate key nutrition messages to children as part of their school curriculum, alongside modification of the food and physical activity environments to improve the health status in Thailand, has been proposed.
It is no surprise that many people are fond of sugar and sweet foods. We’ve been accustomed to having sweet treats as an incentive, or for celebratory occasions in most parts of the world.
