{"id":39097,"date":"2020-11-26T12:02:37","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T12:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=39097"},"modified":"2020-11-27T11:55:31","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T11:55:31","slug":"creating-a-healthier-food-environment-in-singapore-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2020\/11\/26\/creating-a-healthier-food-environment-in-singapore-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating a healthier food environment in Singapore: Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Public Health Nutrition <\/em>Editorial Highlight: ‘Identifying implementation gaps and priorities for the Singapore government to improve food environment policies:  perspectives from a local expert panel’<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In March 2018 we invited a panel of 20 national experts in public health nutrition or chronic disease prevention to evaluate the actions of the Singapore\u2019s governments in creating healthier food environments. Governments \u2014 by their policies, laws, guidelines and health promotion activities \u2014 can influence the relative availability, accessibility, affordability and promotion of healthy food. Singapore is facing rising rates of obesity and chronic diseases, and dietary risk factors are a major contributor to premature death and ill-health.  Understanding how Singapore\u2019s government actions rank against international good practice benchmarks, can serve to build on strengths, and provide insights on areas that need attention to create food environments that support healthy dietary behaviors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We used the Healthy Food Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI) tool and process for this study.  Panel members were provided with Singapore\u2019s government actions, which were validated with government officials, for seven food policy domains (composition, labelling, promotion, provision, price, retail and trade) and six infrastructure support domains (leadership, governance, funding, monitoring and intelligence, platforms for interaction, health-in-all policies) prior to the workshop. Each domain was supported by 2-6 indicators, and overall there were 47 indicators.  At the workshop, panel members anonymously rated Singapore\u2019s actions against international benchmarks for each of the 47 indicators.  Summary scores of the ratings were shared with the panel, and members prioritized indicators for further discussion, and proposed specific recommendations for the Singapore government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panel identified strong and visible political support for healthier food environment policies, restricting commercial influence on policy development, a comprehensive implementation plan linked to national needs, the presence of a health promotion board with dedicated funding, and systems for monitoring risk factors and prevalence of chronic diseases as some key infrastructural strengths. Policy actions that were comprehensive, such as the provision of healthier meals in schools, or innovative, such as subsidies and schemes to support the development and use of healthier ingredients by the food service sector, were also highly rated.  Government actions that were poorly rated as compared to international good practices to improve food environments included those related to taxation, food-related income support, zoning laws, trade agreements, menu-labelling, and restricting promotion of unhealthy foods to children in non-broadcast media and children\u2019s settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some structural recommendations proposed by the panel such as improvements in nutrition profiling and monitoring systems have the potential to positively impact several policy domains.  Recommendations to improve nutrition labelling policies, and to establish food compositional standards for nutrients of concern, were also highlighted by similar panels in Thailand and Malaysia suggesting synergistic areas for public health actions across governments in South-East Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Access the full article here<\/a> \u2018Identifying implementation gaps and priorities for the Singapore government to improve food environment policies:  perspectives from a local expert panel\u2019 by Zoey Tay, Clare Whitton, Rob M van Dam, Kee Seng Chia, Boyd Swinburn, Stefanie Vandevijvere and Salome A Rebello.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Click here<\/a> to view all Editorial Highlights from Public Health Nutrition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Public Health Nutrition Editorial Highlight: ‘Identifying implementation gaps and priorities for the Singapore government to improve food environment policies:  perspectives from a local expert panel’ In March 2018 we invited a panel of 20 national experts in public health nutrition or chronic disease prevention to evaluate the actions of the Singapore\u2019s governments in creating healthier food environments. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":821,"featured_media":39098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2467],"tags":[51,195,154,1883],"coauthors":[8212],"class_list":["post-39097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nutrition","tag-nutrition","tag-nutrition-society","tag-phn","tag-phn-editorial-highlight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/821"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39097"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39119,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39097\/revisions\/39119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39097"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=39097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}