Bilingual food labels to be made mandatory by next year

All companies selling packaged food items in supermarkets will have detailed labels in Arabic and English clearly mentioning fat, carbohydrates, sugar and other nutrition elements, said an official at the two-day Dubai Health Forum on Monday

The two-day health forum organised by the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) being held under the patronage by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minster of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, was inaugurated by Humaid Al Qutami, Chairman of the Board and director general of DHA and had over 2000 international health care experts attending the workshops.

The forum which is to be an annual feature has been designed as a platform to bring together highly respected decision makers, health practitioners, international guest speakers and industry experts to launch next-generation, game-changing technologies in the medical field.

During his inaugural address, Al Qutami said that the health sector is one of the most vital sectors that affects people well-being and country’s development, which is why the forum aims to bring together health care stakeholders to share ideas, perspectives, and forward-thinking trends and acquiring actionable insights regarding Dubai’s future directions in health care to name a few

Health ministers of Oman, UAE and Qatar participated in a key health discussion where the ministers brainstormed on all aspects of sustainable health, policy, planning, strategy and the significance of collaboration in important aspects such as preventive health, planning of human resources in this sector and more research based projects in this field.

Elaborating on mandatory nutrition labels on food items, Dr Wafa Ayesh, head of the clinical nutrition department at the DHA said: “I am a member of the national committee convened to reduce the percentage of salt and sugar in packaged items and we are working on this aspect in close collaboration with the Dubai Municipality. We want people to be educated and aware of the percentage values of the nutritional elements of the food they are eating and they should know how much fat, carbohydrates, sugar and salt they are ingesting in per serving of that food.”

Dr Ayesh was talking about the food and nutrition awareness drive undertaken by the Dubai Health Authority in reference with a plan to emulate an experiment undertaken by Mike Cornett, the mayor of Oklahoma City. Cornett, who spoke at the conference about how he put the entire city on a diet from 2007 to 2012, making people lose about one million pounds collectively, roughly the weight of 100 elephants.

Dr Ayesh said the clinical nutrition department was already working on a series of healthy initiatives for both young students and adults in Dubai. “In order to reduce childhood obesity, we have the school tiffin box programme where we educate the schoolteachers and the parents over what should the ideal content of a tiffin box. We have guidelines for suppliers to school canteens on the content of the food that is made available to students.

"We started the Tummy Fish initiative that has a story and an app that motivates children to drink a lot of water and remain hydrated. For adults we have a number of bicycling tracks, park walking trails and started the Injaz Akher or ‘ Do more ‘initiative where we provide free fitness advise at all Dubai parks beginning from February-end to April. Our healthy restaurant initiative in collaboration with Dubai Municipality makes sure that the food items available at our approved restaurants have exactly the nutrition content they claim they have.”

Dr Manal Taryam, CEO of the Primary Health Centres at DHA said that it was coordinated team work between government agencies such as DHA, municipality and the sports council which would ensure that an experiment like the one Cornett successfully pulled off in Oklahoma City could be made possible in Dubai.

Narrating his own experience Cornett, looking healthy and lean at 58 and serving his fourth successful term as mayor told Gulf News: “Before I started this campaign, I was grossly overweight and lost about 40 pounds by just exercising portion control and reducing my calorie intake from 3000 calories daily to 2000.”

Cornett realised that a little self-motivation, discipline and awareness could go a long way and so he put his entire city on a diet. “Our city was designed to be automobile friendly and no one ever wanted to talk negative about the other. We required to start a conversation on why most of us were so obese. So I launched a website ‘This city is going on a diet’ and nearly 47,000 people signed up of the 640,000 people living there.”

Cornett said that his initiative created awareness initiated a momentum on good health which was taken up as a challenge by many. “ The real power of my message was that it forced a dialogue and business leaders liked it and started a wellness campaign for their employees, restaurants included a ‘mayor’s special meal’ on their menu that was healthy and nutritious and city chefs took it upon themselves to create healthy recipes.”

With the people on his side, Cornett then worked with the planners to redesign the city around the people by building more sidewalks, walking tracks and is confident that future generations in his city will be health conscious. “Obesity has deep roots in the culture that you grow up in. The next generation in Oklahoma City will have fitness regimens as part of their city walking and cycling trails, healthy food and a greater collective consciousness will mean the next generation will have an ingrained sense of good health.

source : gulfnews