THE non-alcoholic beverage industry continues its unwaivering and unrelenting drive with sugar and salt fizzy drinks into the Fijian market and serious attempts must be drawn by health conscious people of Fiji.
Minister for Health Dr Neil Sharma made the comment at the launch of the national nutritional month in Suva yesterday.
Dr Sharma said nutrition poor, energy dense savouries needed to be regulated and advertising bans needed to be formalised.
He also highlighted that the double edged sword of under nutrition and obesity remained the focus of the ministry's policy.
"Whilst we have provided a programmatic approach for every unborn child, safe passage to adulthood with novel nutritional initiatives, we still face operational roadblocks and humps within our health care system which needs smoothing out," Dr Sharma said.
And with anaemia being another major issue linked to nutrition, he highlighted a lot of people in Fiji were anaemic.
"Twenty per cent adult male, 40 per cent adult female, 30 per cent less than five-year-old and 20 per cent infants are anaemic based on 2004 studies," Dr Sharma said.