Guyana among CARICOM countries indifferent to FOPL food consumption warnings

Five years after the Caribbean first began deliberating the adoption of what is known as a Front of Package Label (FOPL) aimed at sensitizing consumers to what has become “a growing endemic of non-communicable diseases” that can derive from being unmindful of the dangers associated with mostly food and beverage consumption, the Caribbean, including Guyana, still appears unprepared to address the issue frontally.

Guyana, reportedly is one of several Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries that remain seemingly indifferent to the importance of embracing FOPL as a guide to food consumption habits, according to the article authored by Caribbean writer Daphne Ewing- Chow. The resistance across the region to FOPL as a means of alerting consumers to the importance of being selective of the foods and beverages that they consume is particularly important given the significant numbers of cases of food consumption-related diseases and deaths that derive from an absence of prominent warnings on health issues on the packaging of foods that are known to be attended by negative health-related effects.

The seeming indifference in the region to paying attention to the importance of FOPL protocols, Ewing-Chow writes, persists “despite scientific evidence presented by the region’s health sector, pointing to the efficacy of octagonal front of package labeling,” a circumstance which she says has metamorphosed into “a protracted struggle between public health and the food industry” which she says has “stalled progress in the fight against the region’s number one killer.”

Here, in Guyana, the prevailing legal and illegal importation of a range of snack foods and confectionery from various parts of the world, minus the packaging and labeling of which includes FOPL cautioning, enhances the risk particularly for children who, in many cases, tend to be indiscriminate in their snack consumption habits. In an article that appears to have been preceded by painstaking research, Ewing-Chow noted that “Non Communicable Diseases (NCD’s) such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and hypertension” had “taken a severe toll on Caribbean economies and societies, accounting for up to 83% of fatalities each year— the highest rates in the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)/ World Health Organization (WHO) Region of Americas.”

The Caribbean, she adds, “Also exhibits the highest rates of morbidity associated with NCDs and holds the top position for premature NCD mortality within the Americas.” Other ‘fault lines’ in the health-related bona fides of children obtain in the Caribbean, much of which is likely attributable to food/snack constraints that are not fettered by FOPL warnings. “Between 2000 and 2016, overweight (including obesity) among children and adolescents increased in every country and territory in the region, doubling in 20 countries and territories and tripling in three.” Ewing-Chow tags obesity as a by-product of “urbanization and obesogenic food environments,” describing these as “the primary risk factor for the development of NCDs, the leading cause of death in the region.”