ISLAMABAD: The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations and the Planning Commission have jointly developed comprehensive dietary guidelines for the general public to adopt healthy eating practices, and prevent and reduce the risk of infectious and chronic diseases.

“It is an opportune time to disseminate the dietary guidelines, when the country is confronted with challenges of diet associated dise­ases, including overweight, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and cancers,” according to FAO representative in Pakistan Mina Dowlatchahi.

The “Pakistan Dietary Guidelines for better nutrition emphasised on the consumption of a variety of safe and nutritious foods and decreasing consumption of energy dense foods such as deep fried foods, bakery products, processed foods and reducing the amount of fat specifically saturated fat, oil, sugar and salt in cooking, as there is a strong relationship between diet and disease, specially non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and others that are associated with poor dietary habits.

The guidelines called for a balanced diet in ‘One Plate’ composed of meat and pulses, cereals and cereal products, vegetables, fruits, milk and milk products, and edible oil/ghee. It will officially be launched by FAO later this month.

The dietary guidelines will be useful for multi-sectoral professionals and policy makers to formulate appropriate policy, plan and programmes. These guidelines will also facilitate provincial good and drug authorities to implement food quality standards in their respective provinces for ensuring that foods are safe and of better quality.

The guidelines are intended to help in maintaining healthy body weight and reduce the incidence of under-nutrition, over-nutrition, infectious and non-communicable chronic diseases and premature deaths by promoting healthy diets.

Pakistan has been passing through a demographic, economic and nutrition transition characterised by rising population, food accessibility issues, and unhealthy eating trends, lack of safe food handling and management practices, and sedentary lifestyles. This has led to an increase in nutritional disorders and diet-related diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, cancers and infectious diseases in children, adolescents and adults, especially women.

The first country specific dietary guidelines were developed in 2005. Since then, new scientific evidence related to the beneficial effects of food and bioactive factors, harmful effects of adulterants, contaminants, pesticides and insecticides, unhealthy food consumption patterns and excessive use of salt, sugars, saturated and trans-fatty acids on health, has been generated.

The guidelines recommend exclusive breast-feeding to infants for the first six months of life followed by continuation of breast feeding at least till the age of two years along with appropriate complementary feeding from six months onwards.

The guidelines advise the daily consumption of basic food groups, including cereals, meat and pulses, milk and milk products, vegetables and fruits. The guidelines suggest that the consumption of refined cereals should be reduced and substituted by whole grain cereals while the consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, pulses, meat and milk should be increased as per body requirements.

It is further proposed that the amount of salt, sugar, saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, ghee and cooking oil, sweets, soft drinks and juices containing added sugars, refined and processed foods should be limited.

The food handling and management practices should be safe, and the use of contaminated and untreated industrial wastewater must be prohibited. The pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics and the concentrations of heavy metals like lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium in foods should be checked to remain within the permissible range as recommended by the Codex Alimentarius Commission and Pakistan Standard Quality Control Authority.

In addition, regular exercise and physical activity are crucial for the prevention and management of diseases. The essence of the guidelines is to provide updated dietary recommendations to general population, promote good nutrition, safe food handling and management practices and adopt healthy lifestyles for improved life quality and economic productivity.

In Pakistan, an estimated 10 to 11 per cent of the adult population (aged 25 years and above) is suffering from diabetes and the numbers are expected to increase to 14.5 million by the year 2025.

In addition, cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of disability and premature deaths in adult worldwide, low income to middle income countries bear the brunt by accounting for over 80 per cent of the global disease burden and overwhelming health expenditures amounting to billions of dollars annually. Similarly, cardiovascular diseases account for 19 per cent of all the deaths occurring in adults aged 30 to 70 years in the country.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2018