Vouchers for playing sports or for obtaining fruit or vegetables, a logo to indicate the quality of the product, the report submitted to the Minister must revive nutritional policy.
How to relaunch the French nutritional policy? This is the question to which Prs Serge Hercberg and Prs Arnaud Basdevant tried to answer who presented Marisol Touraine on Tuesday 25 concrete proposals intended to give new impetus to the National Health Nutrition Program (PNNS), including the 3th component will end in 2015.
The first part of this report, written under the responsibility of Prof. Serge Hercberg, is devoted to nutritional prevention, the second, entrusted to Prof. Arnaud Basdevant, is more specifically interested in the management of nutrition-related diseases such as obesity. in France.
However, the purpose of the proposals they make is the same: to reduce risk factors and promote protective factors for chronic diseases, increase life expectancy in good health, and finally reduce social inequalities within the framework of French public health nutritional policy.
Fight against social inequalities
According to these specialists, it is important to relaunch the PNNS for two main reasons. The first is that it works, thanks to the establishment of this national program in 2001, currently the epidemic of obesity in children is stabilizing. Another example of success, all the experts agree that the salt consumption of the French is finally on the decline. On the other hand, social inequalities, such as access to food of good nutritional quality, continue to worsen within the French population.
To face this health emergency, they are therefore proposing several concrete measures, for example the establishment of markets and community gardens in disadvantaged areas or the prohibition of volume promotions for foods and drinks whose nutritional quality is considered. as unfavorable for health. In addition, this report recommends the introduction of “fruit and vegetable” coupons or “physical activity” coupons for the most disadvantaged people.
Listen to Professor Serge Hercberg, nutrition epidemiologist: ” 85% of the population know the slogan, 5 fruits and vegetables per day. 43% meet this threshold, except in disadvantaged populations where it is only 6% of people. “
A unique and visual food logo
Another very concrete measure is the introduction of a tax, coupled with a reduction in VAT, depending on the nutritional quality of the food. Finally, doctors also insist on the urgency of better regulation of food advertising. These experts recommend, for example, to ban the promotion of foods that are too fatty and / or too sweet. They also propose the implementation of a very clear information logo to be placed on the packaging of food products, a system that would allow unique nutritional information on the front face of food packaging.
Moreover, concerning this last measure, Professor Hercberg explains that as part of the reform of school rhythms, we could use this new extracurricular time to educate children to read this nutritional information system on packaging or to make physical activity.
Listen to Professor Serge Hercberg : “This logo could be a color code to compare the nutritional quality of foods, the most unfavorable for nutritional health would be red and the most favorable would be green”
And to relaunch the PNNS, these experts rely on health professionals. Doctors could be the prescribers of the famous “fruit and vegetable” coupons, but also of those providing access to free physical activity, as is the case in Strasbourg with the prescription of a bicycle.
Finally, Arnaud Basdevant and Serge Hercberg propose the establishment of a “nutrition information base” which would feed into a medical file shared between the different caregivers. They also propose to the public authorities to accentuate the territorial network of care for the management of obesity, and to support innovation and research in this field.
.