About 45 per cent of children in Fiji are consuming four or less food groups, and because of this are living in food poverty, says United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Pacific nutrition specialist Pradiumna Dahal.
Speaking at a World Food Day event last Thursday, he said the statistic was from a recent UNICEF report on child food poverty.
Mr Dahal said the remedy lay in teaching children good eating habits from birth, ensuring healthy food was affordable, and in restricting the marketing of unhealthy food in Fiji.
“Child food poverty is very high in the Pacific and the highest is Kiribati with 91 per cent, Samoa with 80 per cent, Tuvalu in third with 71 per cent and Tonga at 47 per cent,” he said.
Mr Dahal said the imbalance in intake of healthy food contributed to the triple burden of malnutrition in the Pacific with high under nutrition, high anaemia, and increasing overweight and obesity.
“To reverse this, we need to ensure healthy, affordable and sustainable diets for everyone, particularly children.”
Mr Dahal said Government, in partnership with the private sector, needed to develop clear and easy-to-understand guidance on healthy diets for children and adolescents.
“More research by academics on what children and adolescents eat and their food choices and are the determinants for healthy and unhealthy diets.
“The huge role of media in promoting healthy foods and also to all private sector to promoting healthy plates at all platforms by all sectors and restricting marketing of unhealthy food among children.
“To caregivers and parents – they must remember that taste buds develop early, therefore interventions should start early at homes within the first years of life and should be reinforced in schools, homes and communities.”
He said children needed to eat healthy food to ensure they were healthy – to prevent malnutrition and other serious diseases in the future.
