Fiji’s growing obesity crisis is being driven by an increasing dependence on processed foods and unhealthy lifestyles, a senior health official warns.
National Diabetes Centre principal medical officer Dr Momtaz Ahmed said many Fijians were now heavily reliant on canned and processed food instead of natural and traditional diets.
“We are eating unhealthy food and we are physically inactive due to being overweight and obese,” Dr Ahmed said.
He said unhealthy eating patterns, combined with reduced physical activity, were contributing to the country’s rising burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
“Our advice to the people is to eat healthy food — the natural diet, your traditional diet, and not the processed food.”
He said modern lifestyles were also limiting the time people spent cooking healthy meals and being physically active.
“People are spending more time on the screen. They have less time to cook healthy food and they are just going and buying canned food and other processed food.”
Dr Ahmed also raised concerns about the growing number of overweight and obese children in Fiji.
“Obesity in children is also increasing in Fiji and globally because children are eating more fast food, more processed food, rather than natural food.”
He encouraged families to include fruits in their daily meals and to take advantage of locally available seasonal produce.
