By Awa Sowe
Food Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) also known as dietary guidelines, are intended to establish a basis for public food and nutrition, health and agricultural policies and nutrition education programmes to foster healthy eating habits. FBDGs provide advice on food, food groups and dietary patterns to provide the required nutrients to the general public to promote overall health and prevent chronic diseases.
It also provides context-specific advice and principles on healthy diets and lifestyles, which are rooted on sound evidence, and respond to a country’s public health and nutrition priorities, food production and consumption patterns, sociocultural influences, food composition data, and accessibility, among other factors.
Based on the value of FBDGs in health and food safety The Gambia has developed its FBDGs, which technical recommendations were validated on Friday, July 15th.
In an interview with Mr Ousman Darboe, Senior Programme Officer for Maternal and Child Nutrition at the Ministry of Health (MOH), he affirmed that Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) are an attempt to translate a vast (and always incomplete) evidences, regarding relations between foods, diet patterns, and health, into specific, culturally appropriate, and actionable recommendations. “Such guidelines are intended to influence consumer behavior, nutrition, and health policies and programmes”.
He explained that the guidelines include dietary recommendations based on food groups according to the general and accepted nutrition principles and current scientific evidence and directives developed by countries to define recommendations for healthy eating.
“These guidelines should be formulated based on the social, economic, cultural and epidemiological characteristics of each country, and, therefore, be developed locally,” he pointed out.
Darboe however noted that the guideline needs to be updated periodically based on the changes in population, health demands and new scientific evidences regarding the relationship between food, nutrition and health.
Commenting on the validation exercise, Mr Darboe affirmed that the team validated the technical recommendations in the country’s FBDG on the various food groups, and that the recommendations were based on evidences. “The messages will be pre-tested in the communities in the coming weeks”.
The Senior Programme Officer further noted that the process for developing FBDG is based on building consensus among various sectors and groups involved in public health. The process, he revealed, is funded by Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO ) and coordinated by the Nutrition Unit of the Directorate of Health Promotion and Education.
He added that the adoption of FBDG contributes to the prevention of malnutrition in all its forms, promotes human health, and reduces environmental impact with messages that express dietary goals in terms of foods, rather than nutrients.
The nutritionist said that foods are sources of macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, fats) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) necessary to cover human metabolism requirements for life and survival.
Commenting on the implementation, Darboe said that there would be a whole session on implementation strategy after the validation of the recommendations.
