The Ministry of Health and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia – Association of Food Industry organized the second educational workshop for media representatives within the national campaign “Aspire for the balance”, on the importance nutrition declaration in the prevention of obesity, with a special emphasis on the correct reading and understanding of nutritive declarations. Specifying the nutritional and health claims is required by Regulations on declaration, labeling and advertising of food in mid-2018.
“Nutritional declaration includes data on the energy value of the food product, the amount of fat, saturated fatty acids, carbohydrates, sugar, protein and salt. With such clear and precise information on the intake of nutrients, nutritional declarations considerably help planning proper nutrition and can help in the treatment and prevention of obesity”, stated Dr. Budimka Novakovic, professor at the Faculty of Medicine of University Novi Sad.
The national campaign “Aspire for the balance” is being implemented as a support for the National Program for Obesity Prevention of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Serbia.
“One of the activities of the Program for the Prevention of Obesity in Children and Adolescents is declaration and food labeling, which deals with this topic in part of the promotion of proper nutrition throughout life” said Snezana Pantic Aksentijevic, head of the Public Health Group of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Serbia.
“Socially responsible companies, members of the Association of Food Industry of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia, recognized the importance and expressed their desire to contribute to further systemic solution of the issue of obesity prevention” pointed Dimitrije Ivanovic, Secretary for Food Industry of Chamber of the Commerce and Industry of Serbia.
The “Aspire for the balance” campaign was launched in mid-2018 in support of the National Program for the Prevention of Obesity in Children and Adults issued by the Ministry of Health. Socially-responsible companies Bambi, Coca-Cola, Dr. Oetker, MARBO Product, Mars and Nestlé, members of the Food Industry Association of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia, recognized the significance of the campaign “Aspire for the balance” and provided support in further systemic solving the problem of obesity and working to prevent this challenge of modern society.
