FAO at SPIEF: Healthy diet, traditional values, and habits

During the final day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2024), the Moscow FAO Office participated in the Past, Present and Future of Our Diet: The Role of Nutrition in Sustainable Development roundtable of Rospotrebnadzor.

Anna Popova, Head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor), Chief State Sanitary Physician of the Russian Federation, personally moderated the event.

“Today, June 7, is a special day, World Food Safety Day. Its theme this year is ‘Food safety: prepare for the unexpected’,” Anna Popova opened the meeting. “The fact is that the number of stress points is growing, the social and economic situation is not getting better after the pandemic, and this is an important factor affecting food safety.

According to FAO, every tenth person on the planet suffers from poor quality food products every year. More than 200 types of infectious diseases are associated with food contamination, and over 1.6 million people suffer from foodborne diseases every day, of which 40% are children under five years of age. It means that our generation, which will live tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, is in the risk zone, which, of course, we all care about.

The Russian Federation pays great attention to the quality and safety of food products, and several federal programmes are dedicated to this matter. Significant amendments regarding the definition of quality have been recently made to the Federal Law ‘On food quality and food safety’. Its new version states that:

• a quality product cannot be considered such if it is not safe;
• the product has to correspond to the specified consumer properties;
• the product has to provide the human body with everything it needs to preserve the health of current and future generations.

A project on healthy diet covering almost all Russian regions is being implemented. Our country is huge, with various food preferences, habits and traditions. This is important, same as caring about the nutritional value and accessibility of food products and the formation of right eating habits in children.

An essential national project in Russia is providing all primary school students with hot, healthy and safe meals from the federal budget. Over the last four years, tangible results have been achieved, and eating habits have been changing for the better: children from the first to the fourth grades now consume less salt and sugar, and the number of spoons of sugar added has decreased fourfold.

It matters because children form healthy eating habits for themselves, which is not the case in high school and is only partially present in middle school.

Today Russia is self-sufficient in diverse, high-quality food, which is a success. However, there are issues concerning food safety, which we consider, study and regulate,” concluded Anna Popova.

“Food safety means that the food we eat must not be harmful. Food may carry biological and bacteriological risks, as well as chemical and radiation risks,” Oleg Kobiakov, Director of the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation, addressed the distinguished audience. “Thus, first of all, our food has to be safe, but also nutritious, healthy, preferably tasty, aesthetically pleasing, and also acceptable in terms of traditions and religious considerations. Therefore, I will not talk about pea protein meat here. Besides, the head of the Moscow FAO Office will not give you any advice to eat maggots: this is unacceptable in a country where more than 20 million residents practice Islam that prohibits eating insects.

The Food Safety Day is an opportunity to talk not only about achievements, but also about bottlenecks. As the head of the international organization office and as a Russian, I am concerned about negative trends in nutrition in our country. Despite the fact that Russia has an energy-sufficient diet, it is far from optimal in terms of quality and structure. Among the main food risks that actually threaten the life and health of Russians, I would highlight excessive consumption of salt.

The Russian Federation consumes up to five times more salt than recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), despite the active work of both the Ministry of Health and Rospotrebnadzor. Unfortunately, the idea to reduce salt consumption has not captured the mind of the public yet. The media, manufacturers, and the catering industry itself are all at fault here. According to the WHO recommendations, the norm is no more than 2 grams of sodium per day, that is, 5 grams of salt.

Meanwhile, everyone is Russia, from the elderly to babies, eats the average of up to 20 grams of salt daily. If at least one hundredth of the funds that go to advertising “non-alcoholic beer” went to public service announcements aimed at decreasing salt consumption, we could increase life expectancy and reduce the number of non-communicable diseases and associated economic losses.

The second national problem is sugar and carbohydrates. The Russian diet is oversaturated with carbohydrates, in particular simple sugars. Our guru, academician Victor Tutelyan, used to repeat that a Big Mac eaten separately for lunch is a paragon of healthy eating. However, together with deep-fried potatoes and ketchup, washed down with a double portion of cola and eaten with ice cream, multiplied by the number of such “snacks” per year, it turns into a time bomb for the body.

The Russian Federation consumes five times more sugar than recommended by nutritionists. Convincing our population, especially children, schoolchildren, to reduce excessive consumption of sugar is one of the most important tasks of the Ministry of Education, Rospotrebnadzor, the Ministry of Health, as well as the food business and the media.”

“I will speak not only as the head of one of the regions, but also as the head of the region where the most aquatic and biological resources are extracted,” Vladimir Solodov, Governor of the Kamchatka Region,began his presentation. “Balanced diet is a special topic. There are standards for fish consumption recommended by the Russian Ministry of Health. Today, they are 28 kilograms per person. They vary quite a lot, both across the world and among the regions of the Russian Federation. The largest quantity of fish is consumed in the Far East and Northwest, while the least of it is eaten in the Caucasus and Siberia.

At the same time, an alarming trend has been noted regarding a decrease in fish consumption. If we look at the statistics for the last five years, it has dwindled from 27.3 kilograms per person to around 22 kilograms. Even more worrying is the fact that fish consumption among the youth has decreased by two and a half times.

Fish is a source of essential micronutrients. Targeted policies in many countries result in increasing fish consumption. In recent years, China has achieved the greatest success in this regard, approximately doubling the volume of eaten fish and reaching the level of almost 40 kilograms per person per year. In such traditional leaders as Japan, Iceland and Portugal, the balanced diet is a significant factor contributing to the life expectancy and health of the nation.

I believe that it is time to also shift towards a targeted policy aimed at encouraging fish product consumption. The President of Russia supported this proposal in August last year when I spoke at a Government meeting. Vladimir Putin tasked the Russian Ministry of Agriculture with developing a road map, which is currently being approved by the government. This document provides a legislative basis for the goal of increasing fish consumption.”

“Our country is diverse, with various eating habits and traditions,” Anna Popova commented on the speech of the governor of the Kamchatka Region. “Our experts, our scientists have reached a conclusion that we need to move towards diet regionalization, taking into account eating habits and, of course, existing imbalances.”

“Take northern regions as an example. There is no sun for six months, and there is a deficiency of vitamins C and D for six months. There are also problems with the supply of fish and fish products. Our scientists conduct special research focusing on children in the Arctic regions and develop algorithms to adapt diets, first of all, for the most vulnerable,” Anna Popova noted. 

“We are the largest restaurant chain in Russia, and over 2 million people visit us every day. We feel responsible for the health of the nation, for the health of those who come to us,” emphasized Oleg Paroev, General Director of the Vkusno – i Tochka company, a Russian brand of fast food restaurants created on the basis of the McDonald’s chain. “The main direction of our self-improvement is food quality and safety. For example, one of our popular burgers is a fish burger, made not with minced meat, but with fillets of fish, which is wild-caught and not from aquaculture cages.

Alternatively, let us take chicken burgers. We build separate blocks with free-range chickens, and we do not use antibiotics. Clearly, it is expensive, and the cost of production of such chickens is many times higher. However, we consciously take this step, since our priority is high-quality and healthy food.

Our mission includes training our suppliers to comply with HACCP standards; we inspect them every year, and these are more than 100 partners across Russia. Every year we conduct over 360 thousand microbiological examinations in independent state-accredited laboratories.

Our third mission is the focus on the youth. Over 65 thousand people work with us, and for many young people we are often the first employer. We have now entered into an agreement with Rosbiotech and developed a special practice-oriented programme, under which students will be able to gain the necessary knowledge and skills while studying and working with us.

Children are also our priority. I know about the importance of healthy diet, especially at a very young age, when all eating habits are formed. We consciously build our food pyramid. We have over 1000 combinations of products where you can consume under 600 kcal. For example, Kids Combo, a replacement for the children’s combo of our predecessor, includes not French fries but carrot sticks and apple slices. We hope that these preferences will remain with children when they grow up.”

The forum was also marked by other vivid and memorable speeches from Senator Yulia Lazutkina, Director of Сommunications at Cherkizovo Group Anastasia Mikhailova, Head of Food Hygiene Department at F.F. Erisman Federal Scientific Center of Hygiene Andrey Setko, and Batyr Berdyklychev, WHO Representative in Russia.

BACKGROUND

Food safety and quality are significant indicators of a country’s level of development. They are influenced by economic and social factors and are largely determined by the role of the state, including standard-setting and control over the products offered to the population.

Thanks to the healthy diet programme within the Demography national project, over the past five years Russia has been able to slow down the increase in obesity rates. 100% of students from the first to the fourth grades are provided with nutritious and free hot meals at school.

However, for a sustainable shift towards healthy diet, it is important not only to ensure the safety and availability of quality food products, but also to encourage people to make long-term changes in their eating behaviour.

The private sector, namely food manufacturers, the restaurant business, and the film industry, has a significant influence on people’s eating behaviour, pushing people to make certain choices and contributing to the formation of eating habits and patterns.