Fish farming has fast turned into a way for many Africans to beat poverty and hunger. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 5 2015 (IPS)

Hillary Thompson, aged 62, throws some grains of left-over rice from his last meal, mixed with some beer dregs from his sorghum brew, into a swimming pool that he has converted into a fish pond.

“For over a decade, fish farming has become a hobby that has earned me a fortune,” Thompson, who lives in Milton Park, a low density area in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, told IPS. In fact, he has been able to acquire a number of properties which he now rents out.

Thompson is just one of many here who have struck gold through fish farming.

African strides in fish farming are gaining momentum at a time the United Nations is urging nations the world over to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns as part of its proposed new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expire this year.In many African towns and cities, thriving fish farmers have converted their swimming pools and backyards into small-scale fish farming ponds, triggering their proverbial rise from rags to riches

The SDGs are a universal set of 17 goals, targets and indicators that U.N. member states are expected to use as development benchmarks in framing their agendas and political policies over the next 15 years.

Faced with nutritional deficits, a number of Africans have turned to fish farming even in towns and cities to complement their diets.

In Zimbabwe, an estimated 22,000 people are involved in fish farming, according to statistics from the country’s Ministry of Agriculture.

Behind the success of many of these fish farmers stands the Aquaculture Zimbabwe Trust, which was established in 2008 to mobilise resources for the sustainable development of environmentally-friendly fisheries in Zimbabwe as a strategy to counter chronic poverty and improve people’s livelihoods.

Over the years, it has been on the ground offering training aimed at building capacity to support the development of fish farming.

The figure for fish farmers is even higher in Malawi, where some 30,000 people are active in fish farming-related activities, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Fisheries are reported to contribute about 70 percent to the protein intake of the developing country’s estimated 14 million people, most of whom are too poor to afford meat.

For many Malawians like Lewis Banda from Blantyre, the country’s second largest city, fish farming has become the way to go. “Fish breeding is a less demanding economic venture, which anyone willing can undertake to do, and fish sell faster because they are cheaper,” he told IPS.

In many African towns and cities, thriving fish farmers have converted their swimming pools and backyards into small-scale fish farming ponds, and many like Banda have seen fish farming trigger their proverbial rise from rags to riches.

“I was destitute when I came to Blantyre eight years ago, but now thanks to fish farming, I have become a proud owner of home rights in the city,” Banda said.

Globally, FAO estimates the value of fish trade to be 51 billion dollars per annum, with over 36 million people employed directly through fishing and aquaculture, while as many as 200 million people derive direct and indirect income from fish.

FAO also reports that, across Africa, fishing provides direct incomes for about 10 million people – half of whom are women – and contributes to the food supply of 200 million more people.

In Uganda, for example, lake fishing yield catches are worth more than 200 million dollars a year, contributing 2.2 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), while fish farming employs approximately 135,000 fishers and 700,000 more in fish processing and trading.

The rising fish farming trend comes at a time when the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) has been on record as calling for initiatives such as fish farming to be replicated in order for Africa to harness the full potential of its fisheries in order to strengthen national economies, combat poverty and improve people’s food security and nutrition.

Last year in South Africa, Alan Fleming, the director of The Business Place, an entrepreneur development and assistance organisation based in Cape Town, came up with the idea of using shipping containers as fish ponds, an idea that was well received by the country’s poor communities.

“My children are now all in school thanks to the noble idea hatched by Fleming of having a fish farm designed within the confines of a shipping container, which is indeed an affordable idea for many low-income earners like me,” Mpho Ntabiseni from Philippi, a low-income township in Cape Town, told IPS.

Citing a growing shortage of traditionally harvested fish, the South African government invested 100 million rands (7.8 million dollars) last year in aquaculture projects in all four of the country’s coastal provinces.

In 2014, some 71,000 South Africans were involved in fish farming, according to figures from South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs.

Nutrition experts say that fish farming has added nutritional value to many poor people’s diets. “Fish farming helps poor African communities to add high-value protein to their diet since Africa often suffer challenges of malnutrition,” Agness Mwansa, an independent nutritionist based in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, told IPS.

Adding an environmental concern to the benefits of fish farming, Julius Sadi of the Aquaculture Zimbabwe Trust, told IPS that “fish from aquaculture ponds are preferred by consumers because they are bred in water that is exposed to very little or no pollution, which means that there is high demand and therefore high income for fish farmers.”

As a result, donor agencies such as the U.K. Department for International Development (DfID) have helped to give Africa’s aquaculture industry a kick-start over the last decade.

According to FAO studies, about 9.2 million square kilometres (31 percent of the land area) of sub-Saharan Africa is suitable for smallholder fish farming, while 24 countries in the region are battling with food crises, twice as many as in 1990.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015 report released jointly by FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP) says that the East and Central Africa regions are most affected, with more than 30 percent of the people in the two regions classified as undernourished.

With fish farming gaining popularity, it could be the only means for many African to beat poverty and hunger. “Fish breeding has emancipated many of us from poverty,” said Banda.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Sipian Lesan, a semi-nomadic pastoralist from Lekuru village in Samburu County, Kenya, taking care of one of his edible fruit-producing plants. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

By Robert Kibet
SAMBURU, Kenya, Jul 30 2015 (IPS)

Sipian Lesan bends to attend to the Vangueria infausta or African medlar plant that he planted almost two years ago. He takes great care not to damage the soft, velvety, acorn-shaped buds of this hardy and drought-resistant plant. ”All over here it is dry,” says the 51-year-old Samburu semi-nomadic pastoralist.

“We hope that every manyatta [homestead] will have a small food forest and that these will grow in concentric circles until they meet and touch each other and expand, creating a continuous food forest" – Aviram Rozin, founder of Sadhana Forest
Sipian is from Lekuru, a remote village located in the lower ranges of the Samburu Hills, an area dotted by Samburu homesteads commonly known as ‘manyattas’, some 358 km north of Kenya’s capital Nairobi. Here, the small villages are hot and arid, dominated by thorny acacia and patches of bare red earth that signify overgrazed land.

Samburu County is one of the regions in Kenya ravaged by recurrent drought, with most of the population living below the poverty line.

Climate change has made pastoralism an increasingly unsustainable livelihood option, leaving many households in Samburu without access to a daily meal, let alone a balanced diet.

“Animals have and will continue to die due to severe drought,” said Joshua Leparashau, a Samburu community leader. “The community still wants to hold on to the concept that having many livestock is a source of pride. This must change. If we as a community do not become proactive in curbing the menace, then we must be prepared for nature to destroy us without any mercy.”

As he looks after his fruit-producing sapling, Sipian tells IPS that some decades ago, before people he calls “greedy” started felling trees to satisfy the growing demand for indigenous forest products, his community used to feed on their readily available wild fruits during extreme hunger.

Now, through a concept new to them – dubbed food or garden forest, and brought to Kenya by Israeli environmentalist Aviram Rozin, founder of Sadhana Forest, an organisation dedicated to ecological revival and sustainable living work – the locals here are adopting planting of trees and shrubs that are favourable to the harsh local weather in their manyattas.

Community tree-planting in semi-arid Samburu County, Kenya. Robert Kibet/IPS

On a voluntary mission to help alleviate the degraded land and food insecurity in this part of northern Kenya, Rozin said that his vision would be to see at least each manyatta owning a food forest.

“The rate at which the community is embracing the concept is positive,” he said. “We hope that every manyatta will have a small food forest and that these will grow in concentric circles until they meet and touch each other and expand, creating a continuous food forest.”

However, the work of Sadhana Forest is not limited to forestation, as 35-year-old Resinoi Ewapere, who has eight children, explained.

“I used to leave early in the morning in search of water and return after noon. My children frequently missed school owing to the shortage of water and food.” But this daily routine came to an end after Sadhana Forest drilled a borehole from which water is now pumped using green energy – a combined windmill and solar energy system.

“Apart from the training we receive on planting fruit-producing trees and practising low-cost permaculture farming, we currently receive water from this centre at no cost,” Ewapere told IPS.

According to Rozin, Sadhana Forest’s initiative to help the Samburu community plant the 18 species of indigenous fruit trees which are drought-resistant and rich in nutrients is also part of a major conservation effort in that the combination of “small-scale food security and conservation of indigenous trees. will also create a linkage between people and trees and they will protect them.”

“We produce the seedlings and then supply them to the locals at no charge for them to plant in their manyattas,” said Rozin. Then, with careful management of the land and water-harvesting structures (swales or ditches dug on contours), water is fed directly into the plants.

The quality of the soil on the swales is improved by planting nitrogen-fixing plants such as beans, while the soil is watered and covered with mulch to prevent evaporation, thus remaining fertile.

One of the tree species being planted to create the food forests is Afzelia africana or African oak, the fruits of which are said to be rich in proteins and iron.  Its seed flour is used for baking. Another species is Moringa stenopetala, known locally as ‘mother’s helper’ because its fruit helps increase milk in lactating mothers and reduces malnutrition among infants.

“Residents here understand that their semi-nomadic life has to be slightly adjusted for survival,” noted George Obondo, coordinator of the NGO Coordination Board, who played a role in ensuring that Sadhana received 50,000 dollars from the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) to jump start its Samburu project.

The money was used to set up a training centre with over 35 volunteers from various countries, including Haiti, to train locals and at the same time produce seedlings, and to build the green energy system for pumping water from the borehole it drilled.

“Things are changing,” said Obondo, “and Samburus know that their lifestyle needs to be altered and also tied to greater dependence on plant growing and not just livestock.” This is why the Sadhana Forest initiative is important, he added, because it is training people and giving them the knowledge and ability to create the resilience that they will need to avoid a harsh future.

Edited by Phil Harris

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, May 5 2015 (IPS)

In the last half-century, people’s lifestyles have changed dramatically. Life expectancy has risen almost everywhere, but this has been accompanied by an increase of so-called non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory diseases, and diabetes – causing more and more deaths in all corners of the world.

José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

My distinguished colleague Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), has called the worldwide rise of NCDs a “slow-motion catastrophe”. If NCDs were once considered the scourge of the developed world, this is no longer true; they now disproportionally affect low- and middle-income countries where nearly three-quarters of NCD deaths – 28 million per year – occur.

Much of the rise of NCDs can be attributed to unhealthy diets. WHO estimates that 2.7 million deaths every year are attributable to diets low in fruits and vegetables. Globally unhealthy diets are estimated to cause about 19 percent of gastrointestinal cancer, 31 percent of ischaemic heart disease, and 11 percent of strokes, thus making diet-related NCDs one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide.

In other words, diet determines health – just as bad diets can lead to disease, healthy diets can contribute to good health.

But what exactly is a healthy diet? This is a difficult question. Generally, a healthy diet must provide the right nutrients in the right balance and with sufficient diversity, limiting the intake of free sugars to less than 10 percent of total energy requirements, and keeping salt intake to less than 5 grams per day.“There is no one-size-fits-all healthy diet. A healthy diet must be affordable, based on locally available foodstuffs, and meet cultural preferences”

However, there is no one-size-fits-all healthy diet. A healthy diet must be affordable, based on locally available foodstuffs, and meet cultural preferences. For over 20 years, FAO, together with WHO, has worked with governments on national Food-Based Dietary Guidelines: short, science-based, tips on healthy eating, in accordance with local values, customs and tradition.

Healthy meals do not always taste or look the same. Take, for example, the Mediterranean and Japanese diets: very healthy and completely different.

The Mediterranean diet revolves around the consumption of legumes, cereals, fruits and vegetables, olive oil, fish, and moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly cheese and yogurt). It emphasises unprocessed, plant-based foods, such as fruits and vegetables, in addition to the consumption of beans, nuts, cereals and other seeds; olive oil is the main source of (unsaturated) fat.

Japanese cuisine, on the other hand, is often associated with sushi (raw fish with rice), and sashimi (fresh raw seafood). The Japanese diet emphasises at least seven ingredients: fish as a major source of protein; vegetables including daikon radish and sea vegetables; rice; soya (tofu, miso, soya sauce); noodles; fruit; and tea (preferably green).

The Japanese and Mediterranean diets are examples of healthy diets. They use a great variety of ingredients; they are rich in plant foods including vegetables and fruit, legumes and fibres; they are modest in red meat; and they utilise many natural herbs and spices instead of salt to flavour food.

Both diets are linked to peoples and cultures as much as to their natural environment: it therefore comes as no surprise that both the Mediterranean diet and the Japanese diet have made it onto UNESCO’s World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

The health benefits of the Japanese and Mediterranean diets are promising. Japanese enjoy one of the longest average life spans in the world – 87 years for women and 80 for men. In Mediterranean countries such as Italy and Spain, women have a life expectancy of 85 years. The figure for Italian men is 80 years, the same as their Japanese counterparts. All of them are above the average of high-income countries: 82 years for women and 76 years for men.

Medical research also indicate that that the Japanese diet leads to the lowest prevalence in the world of obesity – only 2.9% for Japanese women – and other chronic diseases like osteoporosis, heart ailments and some cancers. On the other hand, the Mediterranean diet, if followed for a number of years, is known to reduce the risk of developing heart disease, cancer, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

In sum, adhering to a healthy diet helps you to not only to live longer, but also to have a better quality of life. Conversely, a bad diet causes malnutrition and can expose you to a range of NCDs.

A modern paradox is that many countries – including developing countries – suffer from undernourishment on the one hand, and obesity and diet-related diseases on the other. And while FAO’s chief concern is to eradicate hunger in this world, we cannot separate food security from nutrition. FAO – together with our U.N. agencies – considers food and nutrition security a basic human right.

In all cases, the cost of malnutrition goes beyond the health of the individual: it affects society as a whole in terms of public health costs and loss of productivity, and, therefore, is an issue that must be addressed through public and coordinated action.

Last year’s Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), organised jointly by FAO and WHO, sent a clear message in that direction. The two outcome documents of ICN2, the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the Framework for Action that commit world leaders to establishing national policies aimed at eradicating malnutrition and making nutritious diets available to all.

A key message from ICN2 is: governments have a central role to play in creating a healthy food environment to enable people to adopt healthy dietary practices. Yes, it is consumers who choose what to eat, but it is the government’s role to provide the enabling environment that encourages and makes healthy choices possible. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Safa Subha and three-year-old Rahat rely on Oxfam aid for food to fight malnutrition after having been accustomed to living on a diet of bread and tea. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
BEIT LAHIYA, Northern Gaza Strip, Mar 1 2015 (IPS)

Extensive damage to Gaza’s environment as a result of the Israeli blockade and its devastating military campaign against the coastal territory during last year’s war from July to August, is negatively affecting the health of Gazans, especially their food security.

“We were living on bread and tea and my five children were badly malnourished as my husband and I couldn’t afford proper food,” Safa Subha, 37, from Beit Lahiya told IPS.

“My children were suffering from liver problems, anaemia and weak bones. It was only after I received regular food vouchers from Oxfam and was able to purchase eggs and yoghurt that my children are now healthier.Lack of dietary diversity is an issue of concern, particularly for children and pregnant and lactating women, due to the lack of large-scale food assistance programmes and the high prices of fresh food and red meat

“But it is still a struggle as I have to ration out the food and my doctor has warned me to keep giving the children these foods to prevent the malnutrition returning,” said Safa.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in several communities, lack of dietary diversity was highlighted as an issue of concern, particularly for children and pregnant and lactating women, due to the lack of large-scale food assistance programmes and the high prices of fresh food and red meat.

Before the war, Safa’s husband Ashraf worked as a farmer, renting a piece of land on which he grew produce that he then sold.

“My husband used to earn about NIS 300 per week (about 75 dollars) from farming. After the land became too dangerous to farm, because of Israeli military fire and much of it destroyed in Israeli bombings, my husband tried to earn some money renting a taxi,” said Safa.

However, Ashraf’s attempts to support his family as a taxi driver did not provide sufficient income for their survival.

“He can only use the taxi a couple of days a week because it doesn’t belong to him and he often doesn’t have money to buy fuel because it is so expensive and Israel only allows limited amounts of fuel into Gaza because of the blockade,” said Safa.

Kamal Kassam, 43, from Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip, has had to rely on Oxfam’s Cash for Work programme to support his wife and five children aged 6 to 12.

During the war the Kassam’s had to flee to a U.N. shelter after the family home was destroyed by Israeli bombs, which also wounded his wife and left one of his daughters severely traumatised, suffering from epilepsy and soiling herself at night.

Kassam’s wife Eman is ill and another daughter needs regular medical treatment for cancer.

The Kassams were provided with a temporary tin caravan to live in by aid organisations but were unable to purchase food or school clothes because they had received housing aid and were therefore “less desperate”.

“I used to work in a factory but lost that job after Israel’s blockade. Before the war I made about NIS 30 (about 7.50 dollars) a day by picking up and delivering goods from my donkey cart,” Kassam told IPS.

But during a night of heavy aerial bombardment, a bomb killed his donkey and destroyed the cart as well as his only way of supporting his family.

Israel’s extensive bombing campaign during the war also destroyed or damaged, infrastructure, including Gaza’s sole power plant and water sanitation projects.

As a result, untreated sewage is pumped out to sea and then floods back into Gaza’s underground water system, contaminating drinking water and crops and leading to outbreaks of disease.

Israeli restrictions on imports, including vital spare parts for the repair of sewerage infrastructure and agricultural equipment such as fertiliser and seedlings, has limited crop production.

Furthermore, the regular targeting of fishermen and farmers, trying to access their land and Gaza’s fishing shoals in Israel’s Access Restricted Areas (ARAs), by Israeli security forces has severely hindered the ability of Gazans to earn a living from farming and fishing.

OCHA identified the most frequent concerns regarding food security and nutrition as “loss of the source of income and livelihoods due to severe damage to agricultural lands; death/loss of animals; inability to access agricultural lands, particularly in the Israeli-imposed three-kilometre buffer zone; and loss of employment.”

Food insecurity in Gaza is not caused by lack of food on the market alone. It is also a crisis of economic access to food because most Gazans cannot afford to buy sufficient quantities of quality food.

“As a result of the lack of economic access to food due to high unemployment and low wages, the majority of the population in Gaza has been pushed into poverty and food insecurity, with no other choice but to rely heavily on assistance to cover their essential needs,” said ‘GAZA Detailed Needs Assessment (DNA) and Recovery Framework: Social Protection Sub-Sector’, a report by the World Bank, European Union, United Nations and the Government of Palestine.

“The repetition of one harsh economic shock after the other has resulted in an erosion of household coping strategies, with 89 percent of households resorting to negative coping mechanisms to meet their food needs (half report purchasing lower quality food and a third have reduced the number of daily meals),” said the DNA report, adding that the situation was expected to worsen in 2015.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Holstein cows in a feedlot. Credit: Bigstock

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 24 2013 (IPS)

Nutritionists are promoting an 11th commandment in Mexico: “Thou shalt not eat meat… at least one day a week.”

It is a modest goal in an increasingly carnivorous world, promoted by the Meatless Monday movement that was revived in the United States in 2003 and is slowly spreading to Latin America, with branches in Mexico, Panama and Brazil.

“It’s a tool to invite people to take a simple step to vary their diet and decrease their meat consumption,” Ana Arizmendi, the president of the Mexican branch of Meatless Monday, told Tierramérica.

“And it has come at a very important juncture in time: the country is facing a public health crisis, and individuals as well as political and private entities are very receptive to embracing healthy alternatives,” she added.

The health crisis is obesity.

Mexico, with a population of over 118 million, is now one of the most obese countries in the world, surpassing even the United States, according to “The State of Food and Agriculture 2013”, published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The adult obesity rate is 32.8 percent, according to the FAO report, and more than 30 percent of children between five and 11 years of age are overweight or obese, according to the 2012 National Health and Nutrition Survey. At least 6.4 million Mexicans suffer from diabetes.

“There are many factors that contribute to obesity. One solution is to adopt a much more balanced diet and reduce our consumption of meat and processed meats,” said Arizmendi, a nutritionist trained at the University of León, Spain and coordinator of the Meatless Monday initiative in Mexico since 2011.

This initiative actually dates all the way back to the First World War (1914-1919), when the U.S. government urged citizens to reduce their consumption of staple foods in order to aid the war effort and introduced “Meatless Monday” and “Wheatless Wednesday”.

Meatless Monday was revived in 2003 by former ad man Sid Lerner, in association with the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University.

The campaign advocates eating less red meat as a way to lower the risks of diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and cardiovascular disease, as well as reducing the environmental impacts of intensive livestock farming.

FAO estimates that the meat industry generates nearly one fifth of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The water needs of livestock are far greater than those of vegetables or grains, and meat production also involves significant consumption of fossil fuel energy.

Katia García, a food health researcher at the Mexican NGO El Poder del Consumidor (Consumer Power), stressed that processed meat products often contain monosodium glutamate, a food additive that can pose health risks. “We encourage people to avoid all industrially processed food and drinks, because they contain large amounts of fat, salt and sugar.”

What is needed, García told Tierramérica, is a return to the traditional Mexican diet, “high in fibre, vitamins and proteins, and plain drinking water.”

El Poder del Consumidor is one of 22 member organisations of the Alliance for Food Health, which has launched a campaign against the excessive consumption of carbonated soft drinks called “Would You Eat 12 Spoonfuls of Sugar?”

Public health care spending on treatment for diabetes in Mexico totalled more than 3.87 billion dollars in 2012, according to estimates from the National Health and Nutrition Survey.

But changing habits is not easy.

“There isn’t one single way of eating. Our responsibility is to find one that keeps us healthy,” commented Arizmendi, whose patients are mainly women between the ages of 25 and 45.

This year, Meatless Monday is planning a major awareness-raising campaign over the internet and social networks, along with training for promoters and courses and workshops in schools and workplace cafeterias.

“We still haven’t managed to get a local government to commit to Meatless Monday, but we are working on spreading awareness at the local level and in companies and schools. It’s something new, and there is a lot of ground to cover,” said Arizmendi, who describes herself as “omnivorous”.

In the United States, the Meatless Monday initiative is organising a campaign targeting the Hispanic community, which has largely adopted the bad eating habits of the United States with a diet high in fat, salt, sugar and starch.

The same phenomenon can be observed on this side of the border.

As the average income of Mexican households has improved over the last two decades, there has been an increase in meat consumption, a symbol of higher social standing.

In 1970, average meat consumption was 23 kilos per person annually. By 1990, it had risen to 34 kilos, and today it is 63 kilos, according to figures from the Agriculture and Fisheries Information Service.

Poultry is the most popular meat in the Mexican diet, at 29.5 kilos per person per year, followed by beef at 17.4 kilos and pork at 15 kilos.

In Latin America, Uruguay leads the pack in meat eating, with an average consumption of 98 kilos per person annually, followed by Argentina, with 96.9 kilos, Brazil, with 85.3, and Chile, with 73.9.

But the wide variety of Mexican cuisine offers a huge range of tasty and nutritious alternatives.

“You can mix grains and legumes. For example, the proteins in corn tortillas and beans complement each other and increase their protein value. It’s important to maintain protein consumption to avoid a deficiency, and vegetable protein offers the most benefits,” explained García.

A large number of celebrities have endorsed Meatless Monday, which has now spread to more than 23 countries, and a number of cities have adopted the initiative in hospitals, schools, offices and restaurants.

The Mexican government is preparing a policy to specifically address obesity, which will include food regulation measures.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Excerpt:

Promoting friendship and outdoor games for children is part of Elige Vivir Sano's programme to combat obesity. Credit: Elige Vivir Sano

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Mar 27 2013 (IPS)

The prevalence of obesity and hypertension among the poor in Chile is a factor that aggravates inequality, requiring public policies for prevention and mitigation of the high cost of a healthy diet.

The most recent national health survey, carried out in 2012, found that 8.9 million people in Chile are overweight or obese, equivalent to 67 percent of the population.

The figures indicate that there are 2.1 million more obese people now than in 2003, when the previous survey was done. Morbid or extreme obesity has increased by more than 100 percent and now affects 300,000 people.

Broken down by socioeconomic level, 35.5 percent of the poorest, least educated segment of the population is overweight, compared to 24.7 percent of the middle-income segment and 18.5 percent of the highest.

Chile’s statistics are in line with the results of a 2012 study by the World Health Organization (WHO), which found that the prevalence of obesity worldwide nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008.

Latin America leads that increase. Mexico has one of the highest obesity rates in the world. And in South America, Chile has the third highest obesity rate, after Argentina and Venezuela. It is also the country with the highest proportion of men with hypertension or high blood pressure in South America.

Juan Carlos Prieto, a cardiologist at the Clinical Hospital of the University of Chile, said the figures are not new and reflect complex aspects of social inequality.

“Chile also has record carbohydrate consumption, especially of refined flours, like bread,” he told IPS.

“If you make a quick survey, especially among low-income people, you find the staple food is bread: a person can eat up to six to eight servings a day, which means consuming the same number of grams of salt a day,” he said.

In his view, that is the nub of the problem. “A salty diet, plus obesity derived from over-consuming carbohydrates with the calories they imply, explains the environmental factor of the level of hypertension in Chile,” he said.

Prieto, an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Chile School of Medicine, said the prevalence of hypertension and obesity is higher among people with low incomes, “and there is quite a significant difference” between this group and other sectors of the population.

The problem, he said, is that the prices of fruit and vegetables, essential elements of a healthy diet, have soared in Chile in the past 10 years.

For instance, a kilo of apples used to cost 20 cents of a dollar in street markets, and now costs 1.50 dollars. In supermarkets, the price is even higher.

As a result, Chileans are eating on average 86 kilos of bread a year, an amount that is worrying the experts.

“People on low incomes resort to the cheapest foods, like pasta or bread, which fill them up quickly and do not cost very much,” Prieto said.

This, together with sedentary habits and high levels of stress in society, led the government of President Sebastián Piñera to implement the Elige Vivir Sano (Choose Healthy Living) programme, aimed at changing dietary habits and fomenting the practice of sports among Chileans.

When Piñera took office in March 2010, “over 88 percent of the population did less than 20 minutes exercise three times a week,” the director of the government initiative, Pauline Kantor, told IPS.

She added that this is a social problem, as it affects mainly the most disadvantaged sectors.

“Chile is a sick country, and if we do not take care now, in another 10 years we will be in deep trouble when it comes to heart disease and diabetes, and we will have health costs that will be difficult to sustain,” she said.

Elige Vivir Sano, headed by Piñera’s wife, Cecilia Morel, is one of a number of public policies being taken forward jointly by several organisations.

For example, the Education Ministry decided to increase the time allotted to physical education in schools, from two to four hours a week, while the Health Ministry extended the traditional children’s programme of health control to teenagers, so that overweight adolescents are referred to nutritionists for treatment.

Another novelty is the installation of exercise equipment in public squares, now called “active plazas.” These have been set up in 172 out of the 346 municipalities in the country.

“We are not asking people to join a programme at a gym, but only to learn some exercise routines so they can work out at home or in nearby squares,” Kantor said. The campaign includes radio and television advertising that invites homemakers to exercise using one-kilo packages of rice or beans as weights, to get people to adopt a home exercise routine.

Kantor said that while it would take 10 years to see real change, some progress has already been made. “The last survey of physical activity and sports found that 500,000 Chileans are no longer sedentary, an important achievement,” she said.

Also, “40 percent of the people who contacted Elige Vivir Sano said they had changed at least one habit,” she said.

Now the goal is to turn the programme into law. The draft bill, which will be presented to Congress soon, includes the creation of an executive secretariat, under the Ministry of Social Development, that will coordinate programmes from different ministries. The aim of the bill is “to give the changing of habits the priority that Chile needs,” said Kantor.

In the view of Prieto, the cardiologist, the initiative is “interesting,” but the main thing is to create concrete possibilities for bringing about change.

“When it comes to diet, I repeat, people are urged to eat five fruits a day, but you have to look at the cost of that compared to a plate of pasta, for a family living on the minimum wage,” which in Chile is only 400 dollars a month.

“It has to be evaluated whether this depends only on individuals, or whether the state has to take action to make this happen, for instance by increasing access by the lowest-income sectors,” he said.