The Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization, Unicef and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations celebrated the sanction of the Law for the Promotion of Healthy Eating.
The Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization (PAHO / WHO), Unicef and the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) celebrated this Wednesday the sanction of the Law for the Promotion of Healthy Eating, known as frontal labeling, and they considered it to be “a historic milestone for the improvement of nutrition, public health, and the protection of the rights of girls, boys and adolescents.”
“This law is a very important achievement and is part of a work process with legislators that we began more than four years ago, providing evidence and experiences, and which also had a very active role from civil society”, stated the PAHO / WHO representative in Argentina, Eva Jan Llopis, in a statement.
Llopis remarked that “it constitutes a historic milestone for the improvement of nutrition, public health, and the protection of the rights of girls, boys and adolescents.”
The standard allows the population to be informed through the front labeling with warnings on the packaging of those edible products and non-alcoholic beverages that contain excess critical nutrients, such as sugars, saturated fats, total fats and sodium, taking as reference the Profile Model of Nutrients of PAHO.
“It is prepared under the criteria of the PAHO Nutrient Profile model, formulated with the greatest scientific rigor and free of conflicts of interest, which makes Argentina a model to follow for other countries in the region and the world”, detail.
Eva Jan Llopis, PAHO / WHO representative in Argentina.
Meanwhile, from Unicef they remarked that the law “benefits the entire Argentine society, especially the most vulnerable families that show 21% more obesity than those with high incomes; the social gaps of obesity increase as socioeconomic conditions worsen and adolescents with lower incomes have a 31% higher risk of suffering from obesity “.
The three United Nations organizations noted that the standard impact on an improvement in health as a result of the reduction of risk factors caused by poor nutrition.
In addition, they argued that helping Argentina advance in line with the 2030 Agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals, which establishes the goal of “ending all forms of malnutrition and reducing premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by one third,” he added. the text.
At the regional level, Argentina joins Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay that have front labeling laws so that the population can make informed decisions when deciding to buy.
Additionally, as in Mexico, the new Argentine law advances even more by restricting the use of nutritional or health guarantees (for example, “source of vitamins”, “improves your intestinal transit”) in the labeling of products that carry a or more of the warnings and also requires the submission of alerts on sweeteners.
