Cheap food fuels SA's obesity

Alarming new research shows that South Africans and others in developing countries have no idea about the health risks of what they put in their mouths.

Problems around food labelling, and people's lack of understanding of it, are fuelling obesity, which is on the rise in South Africa.

"People are opting for cheap food that is low in nutrition, tastes good and is prepacked," said Professor Karen Hofman, principal researcher on the paper prepared by Priceless South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand.

She said 70% of packaged food contained sugar, which the consumer might not be aware of.

The research reviewed nutrition labelling research in 20 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

It found that consumers prefer front-of-pack labelling to back-of-pack labelling, and favour labels that use graphs or symbols. "If we are in a multilingual society, which we are, symbols become very important," Hofman said.

She said consumers like information that refers to a portion rather than, for example, per 100g.

Fizzy drinks are a clear example. "Someone might think twice about consuming a drink where it states clearly on the front of it how many teaspoons of sugar went into it.

"But South Africa is in the process of expanding its labelling regulation. New regulations will emerge in the next six to 12 months," Hofman said.

Health Department spokesman Joe Maila said: "I am not able to go into details, but I can say that we firmly believe people must know what they are consuming."

Katie Apleni, a domestic worker who supports a family of nine, said: "I don't look at the information. I just need to know if it has expired or not."

Label Detectives

• Multigrain can mean made with many grains, including white flour. Don't be conned by healthy-sounding names.
• There are many names for added sugar, including fruit juice concentrate, malt syrup, molasses, maltodextrin, corn syrup, carob syrup, dextrose and evaporated cane juice.
• The WHO recommends no more than six to eight teaspoons of sugar a day and no more than 5g of salt.
• Most salt is listed as sodium. To work out how much salt is in a product, multiply the sodium figure by 2.5 and divide by 1000.
• If a yoghurt says "low-fat", be careful as it may be high in sugar.

Katharine Child