Durban - Healthy foods can be up to 60 percent more expensive than unhealthy food in some supermarkets – and this plays a large role in the present problem of obesity.
A study of supermarkets in rural South Africa found that healthier foods typically cost between 10 percent and 60 percent more than unhealthy ones when compared on a weight basis (R per 100g), and between 30 percent and 110 percent more when the comparison was based on the cost of food energy (R per 100 kJ).
This is according to the Department of Health’s non-communicable disease strategy document released earlier this week. The study on supermarkets was done in 2009.
It said that healthy foods were not affordable or accessible in supermarkets in rural areas, and it would take an intervention at government level to change this.
The strategy plan said: “There is a shortage of healthy, low-fat food and little fresh fruit and vegetables in most townships and in many rural areas, and the majority of local shops sell cheap fatty foods rather than healthy goods.
“Access to healthy foods hence requires government interventions by (at least) the departments of Agriculture, Trade and Industry, Finance, Basic and Higher Education,” the report read.
It also said that it was impossible for individuals to simply change their behaviour through education by health promoters, unless healthy foods were more accessible and easily available.
The Department of Health has identified tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diets and the harmful use of alcohol as the four main risk factors when it comes to its strategy plan for non-communicable diseases.
“Diet is clearly one of them so we do feel that we have an obligation to act,” said the Health Department’s Melvyn Freeman. “Poor people can’t always afford healthy food.”
“The message has been to try to look at partnerships at community levels. We’re looking for people to collaborate. (The) government has a responsibility to take action for people,” he said.
The Medical Research Council of South Africa’s Zandile Mchiza said accessibility to healthy food was not the only issue.
“People do not have enough health knowledge. We used to have health education in schools, but we do not have that any more.”
The MEC for health in the Western Cape, Theuns Botha, said a healthy lifestyle was important.
“At the end of November we will announce and launch mobile wellness units. The idea is to test Grade 1 schoolchildren so we can pick up illness early and provide health education,” he said. - The Mercury