Ministry signs MoU to make snacks healthier

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"The ministry has found that people nowadays consume more sugar, fat and sodium than is required by the body, which results in ailments such as diabetes, heart disease, high-blood pressures and obesity," he said.

He was speaking after signing a memorandum of understanding with the six snack food producers and four distributors to reduce the level of sugar, fat and sodium content in their products by 25 per cent and make them available across the country.

The firms taking part in this joint collaboration are Variety Foods International, Mae-Ruay Snack Food Factory, World Food International, S Khonkaen Food Industry, Thai President Food and Alpha J. They produce extruded snacks, peanuts, seeds, crackers and dried pork.

The distributors who have signed in are CP ALL Public Company, Siam Makro, Tesco Lotus and Central Foods Retail.

Under this collaboration, the manufacturers will launch their first lot of healthy products next month and initially make them available at schools, he added.

"The ministry has to issue this policy because obesity needs to be reduced in children first," he said.

Variety Foods International's managing director Somnuek Ngamnithiporn said that reducing the content of sugar, fat and sodium in snacks would increase the production costs because they would have to add other ingredients such as powdered milk and red bean to enhance the flavour.

"If the cost of producing these snacks does not increase by more than 10 per cent, the company will not raise the retail price because we want to help Thai children become healthy," he said.

Citing a recent survey conducted by the ministry, Wittaya said the obesity rate among children has risen from 4 per cent in 1999 to 13 per cent this year, or one out of every four children is obese. Most of them are children living in urban areas.

Owing to bad eating habits, about 30 to 80 per cent of the youngsters would end up facing chronic diseases such as high-blood pressure, coronary heart disease and stroke, he added.

Another study in 2006 found that children spent Bt26 a day or Bt9,800 a year on average on snacks, while parents only spent an average of Bt3,024 a year on school fees.