Population-based dietary approaches for the prevention of noncommunicable diseases.
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Date
2016-04
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia
Abstract
As the incidence of noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes continues to rise
at an alarming rate in South-East Asia, it is imperative that urgent and populationwide
strategies are adopted. The most important contributors to the rise in
noncommunicable disease are a rise in mean caloric intake and a decrease in
physical activity. The evidence for population-based dietary approaches to counter
these factors is reviewed. Several structural and cohesive interdepartmental
coordination efforts are required for effective implementation of prevention
strategies. Since low- and middle-income countries may lack the frameworks
for effective and integrated multi-stakeholder intervention, implementation of
population-based dietary and physical-activity approaches may be delayed and
may be too late for effective prevention in current at-risk cohorts. Evidence-based
strategies to decrease energy intake and increase physical activity are now well
established and their urgent adoption by Member States of the World Health
Organization South-East Asia Region is essential. In the context of Sri Lanka,
for example, it is recommended that the most effective and easy-to-implement
interventions would be media campaigns, restrictions on advertisement of
unhealthy foods, taxation of unhealthy foods, subsidies for production of healthy
foods, and laws on nutrition labelling that introduce colour coding of packaged
foods.
Description
Keywords
best buys, food taxation, NCD, noncommunicable diseases, obesity