As consumer organisations all over the world continue to celebrate World Consumer Rights Day, which came up last Sunday, the federal government has been called upon to come up with statutory regulations to discourage unhealthy foods and their advertisements.
The call was made by the Consumer Protection Council, Lagos, during a symposium in Lagos to mark the consumer day.
The theme for this year’s Consumer Day celebration has been aptly titled ‘Consumer’s Right to Healthy Foods’ as Consumer International, the umbrella body of over 220 consumer federations and organisations, seeks ways to inculcate healthy eating habits into people’s life style.
The international organisation, of which Nigeria is a member, noted that unhealthy diets have been linked to four of the ten biggest causes of death in the world.
According to their reports, “unhealthy diet is linked to obesity, high blood pressure, high glucose and high cholesterol. Obesity alone is estimated to cost the world $2 trillion annually.”
Recent reports from the World Health Organisation (WHO) also stated that while the global obesity figure stood at 1.6 billion in 2005, about 2.3 billion adults are likely to be overweight this year.
Other health implications, experts warned, include arteries destruction when unhealthy fast foods are consumed over a long time. Junk foods also deplete energy. They reduce immunity to fight disease. The additives used in making most fast foods to enhance appearance, taste, flavours and texture are mostly dangerous in the body.
In Nigeria, the Consumer Protection Council of Nigeria kicked off the event on Friday, March 13th, with a presentation on consumers’ right to healthy foods in some selected mosques and Sunday, March 15th made presentations on the same topic in various churches.
For instance, while top officials of the CPC Lagos office were at Saint Leo’s Catholic Church Ikeja and the Foursquare Gospel Church, OPIC Estate, Lagos, the Director General of the council, Dr. Dupe Atoki, spoke on the need for healthy foods at another church in, Abuja.
Thereafter, there was the Walk for Health to create awareness, undertaken by the staff of CPC zonal offices including the head office on Monday, March 16th. This was then followed up by sensitisation talks in various schools like the Lagos Progressive Senior and Junior Secondary Schools, Surulere.
The CPC Lagos office is also poised to visit more schools such as the Community Senior and Junior High Schools, Surulere, Ilupeju Senior Secondary School Oshodi, Ilupeju Junior Secondary School Oshodi, Sunnyside Schools Ilupeju and Penman College Ilupeju.
Speaking with the CPC Lagos Head, Mr. Tam Tamunokonbia, last week after the Walk for Health programme in his office, he said that government should take deliberate steps to support the agencies assigned to protect the consumers to carry effective awareness programmes and come up with statutory regulations to discourage unhealthy foods and their advertisements.
Lamenting the absence of effective regulations, he said that there is no standard labelling or packaging guidelines to determine what most eateries in Nigeria dish out to consumers.
“Nutrition labelling on pre- packaged foods appears to be the trend, Nigeria cannot afford to be otherwise. Such labelling educates the consumers and fulfils his rights to both education and information.”
The CPC Lagos Head also called on the food and beverage industry operatives to regulate their operations by maintaining health standards in their kitchens or factories by reducing their sugar, salt and addictive contents in their foods and drinks.
“They also need to reduce their advertisement appeal, especially to children,” regretting that self regulation has not worked because of profit motive.
However, he observed that self regulation and nutrition labelling cannot work in the absence of effective government statutory regulation. “Where the laws are silent, regulations should be enacted to meet the needs of consumers.”
Emphasising that the CPC, NAFDAC, and SON are already protecting consumers in the food and drink industry, he urged them to collaborate to protect the consumers not only in asserting his rights but in protecting him from the clutches of manufacturers and vendors of unhealthy, unsafe fast and junk foods.
Also speaking at a one-day symposium organised in Lagos by brand journalists to mark the World Consumer Day, Mr. Tamunokonbia noted that unhealthy food intake will ultimately deplete the national work force.
Speaking at the symposium which seeks to unravel the ‘Implications of Unhealthy Food intake to National Development’, he argued that every nation develops with its human resources. “A nation that allows its generation of youths to be hacked down by unhealthy food-related diseases will soon run out of its work force to produce its wealth,” adding that “Health is Wealth”.
Furthermore, he said that the majority of those who survive the ailments will hardly have enough strength to produce for the nation.
The tradition of setting aside March 15th every year to celebrate the consumer can be traced to that date in 1962 when John F. Kennedy, then American President, addressed the parliament on Consumer Bill of Rights.
