EPaper

Government urged to subsidise nutritious food for children

Tamar Kahn Health & Science Correspondent kahnt@businesslive.co.za

The nonprofit DG Murray Trust (DGMT) is urging the government to subsidise food producers and retailers so they can slash the price of a carefully selected basket of goods 30%, and improve the diet of SA’s most deprived children.

The aim of the subsidy, estimated at R1.8bn a year, is to close the gap between what children need and what parents can afford, while signalling which foods have the highest nutritional value, said DGMT CEO David Harrison.

Food prices rose sharply in the past year, while the child support grant barely kept pace with consumer price inflation. Food price inflation hit a 14-year high in January at 13.4%, almost double the rate of CPI, which came in at 6.9%, according to Stats SA. The monthly child support grant, which rises from R480 to R500 in April, falls far short of the trust’s estimate of the food poverty line, which it has pegged at R709 a month for 2023.

The Treasury announced in the February budget that food producers would get tax breaks to counter the effects of loadshedding, a measure intended to help keep food affordable. But the trust says more measures are required to put nutritious food on the table in low-income households.

Despite being a middleincome country, SA has a high rate of child malnutrition, said Harrison. More than a quarter (27%) of children under the age of five are stunted, he said, citing the 2016 SA Demographic and

Health Survey. While there are signs childhood nutrition is improving in the Western Cape, stunting remains high: one in six (17.5%) of the province’s children under the age of five is stunted, down from 27.4% in 2016, according to research released by the trust on Wednesday.

Stunting results from inadequate diet and disease, and is linked closely to a country’s human capital development and economic growth. Children who do not get adequate nutrition — including carbohydrates, protein, fats and micronutrients — may be short for their ages and suffer irreversible damage to cognitive development that carries through into adulthood. Improving early childhood nutrition bolsters human productivity, which in turn improves economic growth, said Harrison.

The DGMT has identified 10 food items that it believes represent the best buys for cashstrapped households. It proposes that manufacturers and retailers waive the mark-up on one product label for each of them.

The products are mostly nonperishable, protein rich foods, and include: eggs, speckled beans, pilchards, fortified maize, milk powder, soya mince, peanut butter, white rice, soup mix and a Masi, which the trust has costed at R327 a month in February. It emphasised the basket is not meant to provide all of a child’s nutritional needs, as it does not include fruit and vegetables. These products could be sold under retailers’ own brands, or under a national zero-stunting campaign “Grow Great” logo, said Harrison.

NATIONAL

en-za

2023-03-30T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-30T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://bdmobileapp.pressreader.com/article/281543705183635

Arena Holdings PTY