Codex Alimentarius has been reluctant to fulfill its responsibilities of improving public health by nutrition and diet. The international agency passed potentially restrictive guidelines on food supplements in its 2005 plenary session but it has now been asked to move towards a more positive policy. In recently filed comments, South Africa has asked that the agency''s previous equivocal stand should give way to a clear expression of support for the health of populations through nutrition as an important preventive tool to reflect the World Health Organisation''s Global strategy on diet, physical activity and health.

Optimal health through nutrition is foundational to the very purpose for which Codex exists.
Image: Codex Alimentarius

Already in 2003, the South African delegation to the Codex Nutrition Committee proposed to amend the then under discussion food supplements guidelines, in the sense that

"people should ... be encouraged to select a healthy diet and supplement this diet with those nutrients for which the intake from the diet is insufficient to meet the requirements necessary for the prevention of chronic diseases and/or for the promotion of health beyond the demands of preventing micronutrient deficiencies."

Again in June 2004, South Africa opposed a Codex health claims rule which states that "no information may be given regarding any food''s effects for the prevention, alleviation or cure of any disease."

South Africa should be applauded as one of the few voices of sanity in a health debate that generally favors pharmaceutical intervention over such time-proven methods as eating well, exercising and supplementing any nutrients that may be missing, to achieve optimal health. The country''s latest recommendation to Codex urges that

- nutrients should not be seen or be treated as though they were toxins;

- the sales of dietary supplements throughout the world should be unrestricted;

- trans fats added by hydrogenation of vegetable oils should be banned;

- the addition of nutrients to foods should be encouraged;

- industrial toxins in foods should be strongly restricted by legislation;

- the decline of nutrients in food crops should be compensated and nutrient density of foods optimized;

- optimal nutrition should be encouraged and supported by national and international policies;

- nutrition and health claims for junk foods should be discouraged while such claims should be encouraged for healthy foods;

- foods should be truthfully and accurately labeled;

- junk food advertising to children and young people should be banned and

- the respective chairs of the Codex Committees for food labeling (CCFL) and for nutrition (CCNFSDU) should be required to report in regular intervals on the status of implementation of the WHO''s Global Strategy on diet, physical activity and health as well as the above proposed policies.