Make healthy diets affordable

Today, Papua New Guinea joins the rest of the world in celebrating World Food Day.
It falls every year on Oct 16 in honour of the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations in 1945.
Every day, one in nine people around the world do not have enough food to support a healthy, active lifestyle.
The problem has been compounded by climate change, which often has a devastating impact on food security. Severe drought has often led to shortages of food, water and energy.
The day is celebrated widely by many other organisations concerned with food security, including the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
This year’s theme is: “Our Actions Are Our Future Healthy Diets for A #ZeroHunger World.”
The theme achieving zero hunger is not only about addressing hunger, but also nourishing people, while nurturing the planet.
This year, World Food Day calls for action across sectors to make healthy and sustainable diets affordable and accessible to everyone. It calls on everyone to start thinking about what we eat.
In recent decades, we have dramatically changed our diets and eating habits as a result of globalisation, urbanisation and income growth.
We have moved from seasonal, mainly plant-based and fibre-rich dishes to diets that are high in refined starches, sugar, fats, salt, processed foods, meat and other animal-source products. Less time is spent preparing meals at home, and consumers, especially in urban areas, increasingly rely on supermarkets, fast food outlets, street food vendors and take-away restaurants.
A combination of unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles has sent obesity rates soaring, not only in developed countries, but also low-income countries, where hunger and obesity often coexist.
Now over 670 million adults and 120 million girls and boys (5-19 years) are obese, and over 40 million children under 5 are overweight, while over 820 million people suffer from hunger.
An unhealthy diet is the leading risk factor for deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and certain cancers. Linked with one fifth of deaths worldwide, unhealthy eating habits are also taking a toll on national health budgets costing up to USD 2 trillion per year.
Obesity and other forms of malnutrition affect nearly one in three people. Projections indicate that the number will be one in two by 2025.
PNG despite boasting that we are a country with resources galore and hectares of fertile agricultural land still cannot properly and adequately feed our rural population especially children.
Here in PNG, food security is on our minds as the drought continues, affecting communities across the country who don’t have enough food or water.
Food security is about the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.
There is abundance of food in this country, however the problem is due to poor quality and nutrition, which is common in rural areas.
Nutritional planning involves formulation of a nutrition policy and overall long term planning to improve production and supplies of food, ensure its equitable distribution and programmers to increase the purchasing power of people.
This may include, land reforms, proper guidance in agriculture to help farmers to get better yields from their lands, help in proper marketing of farm produce.
It is the future of PNG we are talking about here.