Population-based dietary approaches for the prevention of noncommunicable diseases
Loading...
Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
World Health Organization. Regional Office for South-East Asia
Abstract
Description
As the incidence of noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes continues to riseat an alarming rate in South-East Asia, it is imperative that urgent and populationwide strategies are adopted. The most important contributors to the rise innoncommunicable disease are a rise in mean caloric intake and a decrease inphysical activity. The evidence for population-based dietary approaches to counterthese factors is reviewed. Several structural and cohesive interdepartmentalcoordination efforts are required for effective implementation of preventionstrategies. Since low- and middle-income countries may lack the frameworksfor effective and integrated multi-stakeholder intervention, implementation ofpopulation-based dietary and physical-activity approaches may be delayed andmay be too late for effective prevention in current at-risk cohorts. Evidence-basedstrategies to decrease energy intake and increase physical activity are now wellestablished and their urgent adoption by Member States of the World HealthOrganization South-East Asia Region is essential. In the context of Sri Lanka,for example, it is recommended that the most effective and easy-to-implementinterventions would be media campaigns, restrictions on advertisement ofunhealthy foods, taxation of unhealthy foods, subsidies for production of healthyfoods, and laws on nutrition labelling that introduce colour coding of packagedfoods
22
26
22
26