QCOSTARICA — Costa Rica is currently facing an obesity crisis, reaching alarming proportions and according to the World Health Organization (WHO) could become by 2060 the third most obese country in the world.
According to data from the WHO, the OECD and Unicef, currently, almost one-third (31%) of Costa Ricans suffer from obesity and almost one-third (31.7%) of children between 5 and 19 years old are overweight or obese. The country spends annually US$57.6 million to care for complications associated with obesity.
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Faced with this worrying scenario, nutritionists have highlighted the crucial importance of implementing front labeling on foods, a measure that would allow consumers to easily identify when a product contains high levels of sodium, fat, or sugar. This would provide important information for making healthier food choices.
A circular issued by the Ministry of Health in June last year, which ordered the front labeling present on some imported foods to be hidden, was recently annulled by the Constitutional Court.
Read more: Foods high in calories, sugar and fat will have to include a front label
The decision was made due to the lack of requirement in national and Central American regulations to disclose high levels of calories, fat, sugars, and sodium in foods. As a result, front warning labels will now be visible on products.
However, according to the Defensoría de los Habitantes (Ombudsman’s Office), needed is the Central American Ministries of Health and Economy adopt the recommendations of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), through a normative resolution or a regional regulation.
Front labeling systems
These are some of the systems that are used in the world.
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- Reference intake label. It details how much energy and how many nutrients (fats, saturated fatty acids, sugars and salt) a serving of a food contains, and what percentage it represents in the daily reference intake.
- Nutri-Score. The system uses a scale of five colors associated with the letters A to E, which allows us to distinguish products with higher nutritional quality (dark green and light green) from products with lower nutritional quality (orange and red).
- Traffic light system. The colors green, amber and red are used to classify the content of those nutrients per 100 g/ml of food/drink as “low”, “medium” or “high”, respectively, based on the percentage of reference intakes.
- Warning Octagons. Octagonal warnings are one of several types of label systems developed to indicate when food products and beverages are high in sodium, sugar, sodium/salt, fat, saturated fat, and trans fat.
Currently, the Central American Technical Regulation only requires communication on the composition of macronutrients and micronutrients on the nutritional label of foods.
To implement this system in the country, the legislative bill proposed seeks to impose front nutritional labels on foods and alcoholic beverages.
The Costa Rican Chamber of Food Industry (CACIA) argues that this labeling does not affect eating patterns or lifestyles. For its part, the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Commerce (MEIC) opposes the bill because it considers it contrary to international treaties and possibly unconstitutional.
What the experts say
Dr. Emmanuel Bonilla Ugalde, Surgeon at the Hospital Metropolitano, told La Republica that “access to safe food is a human right and social determinant of health. Areas that lack food security are known as food deserts, in a parallel line, those places with a saturation of unhealthy foods, with high caloric density and low nutritional value, are known as food swamps.”
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As indicated by the Pan American Health Organization, “Front labeling is a simple, practical and effective tool to inform the public about products that can harm health and help guide purchasing decisions,” added the doctor.
Jeanette Zuniga, Director of the Nutrition program at UCIMED, explained that “frontal labeling is not a foolproof method for making food decisions by the community, but it is easier to identify the type of food you can choose.
“Having a simple and easy to identify icon that indicates that a product is high in fat or sugar allows the person to have more clarity about what they are about to purchase or consume.”
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