Safe food, better nutrition and healthy children – that was the key theme at the Asian Food Information Centre (AFIC) Roundtable Discussions on Children’s Diet and Health held at the Dusit Thani Hotel, Bangkok on April 29, 2008.

Significant changes in lifestyles throughout Asia including reduced physical activity and an increased incidence of eating out, has meant that the health challenges facing children and their parents/carers in Asian countries have changed markedly over the last few decades. Experts from around the region including attendees from the World Health Organization (WHO), government regulators and scientists as well as representatives from the media and the food industry met to discuss the most common nutrition issues affecting Asian children today and effective ways to address these.

From Delhi to Beijing, Bangkok to Seoul, the issues which surfaced were similar. Children in urban areas in Asia are tending to become fatter and less fit. Yet despite adequate or excessive calorie intakes in major cities, nutrient intakes are often not balanced. Prof Yang Yue Xin, Director, National Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety, China, said that the Chinese National Nutrition Survey showed low intakes of calcium, zinc, vitamins A, B2 and C despite children getting enough to eat. Efforts to address overweight in children in the region need to ensure that micronutrient intakes are not compromised, she said.

Dr Kunal Bagchi, Regional Nutrition Advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO), South East Asian regional office in New Delhi, India, said that one of the key issues is the high incidence of eating out. Lifestyles in the region today have resulted in a high incidence of working mothers with less time allocated to meal preparation and family mealtimes. Eating out is increasingly common and children may not always be making the best food choices. This was confirmed by a recent study by AFIC in 13-49 year olds which found that people in Bangkok eat out on average 21 times a month, mostly at hawker centres. In Shanghai, the incidence of eating out was lower but still significant at 12 times a month. Ms. Helen Yu, Executive Director of AFIC said that consumers need more information on healthy food choices. “Our study showed that people wanted more information on nutrition with about two thirds of those in Bangkok saying they would make some changes to their (and their family’s) diet if they had more information”, said Ms. Yu.

The AFIC research, which was conducted in Bangkok and Shanghai in October and November 2007, looked at the main factors driving food choice and found that taste was the primary thing people look for when choosing meals. This is followed by nutrition and to a much lesser extent, information on the food label. The research sought to determine preference for various nutrition labels on foods yet found that consumer understanding of the food label was low regardless of the format in which the information was presented.

The study tested three types of labels – “traffic light labels” which use red, amber and green colours to indicate the relative amounts of calories, fat, sugar and salt; Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) labels which provide information on the amount of calories, fat, sugar and salt and the proportion of these in a serving of food compared to the recommended daily amounts and finally a label which just provided information on the calories in a serving of food and the total number of calories needed daily. The findings showed that while most people could state the number of calories in a food when shown the labels, they did not understand colour coding in the traffic light labels and most did not know the amount of calories they needed in a day or the calorie levels of commonly consumed foods and beverages. The level of knowledge and understanding was lower in young people and in those less educated.

Children and teenagers are the focus of a lot of attention from health authorities in an effort to reduce the growing risk of obesity yet they were the very groups most likely not to read food labels and they expressed less interest in getting information on healthy choices. “Programmes to educate children and adolescents on maintaining healthy body weights need to be carefully planned to make sure they are targeted and effective’ said Ms Yu. “Many meals are taken outside of the home so perhaps providing simple information on the calories in popular meal choices may be a good first step in helping people to make better choices”. In Singapore, the government has provided nutrition information on hawker foods for several years now in recognition of the fact that these foods supply a significant percentage of people’s daily calories.

Education on energy balance is also needed as the study showed that many were confused by the calories they needed daily and the relative amounts provided by commonly eaten foods.