The Ministry of Health has called on food and beverage manufacturers to clearly disclose the levels of sugar, salt and saturated fats contained in their products, as part of a new front-of-pack warning labelling initiative designed to help Ghanaians make more informed dietary choices.
Representing the Health Minister, the Ministry’s Director for Technical Coordination, Dr Hafez Adam, said the initiative forms part of broader efforts to address the growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Ghana, many of which are closely linked to excessive consumption of sugar, salt and unhealthy fats.
The Ministry stressed that tackling the rising burden of non-communicable diseases cannot be achieved by government alone, extending a direct appeal to the public, development partners, academia and the media to support ongoing efforts to address the various factors contributing to these conditions.
“We are encouraging the public, and we are also calling on partners, academia and the media, inclusive, to be able to support us in addressing the factors that contribute to non-communicable diseases,”
Dr Hafez Adam,
Shifting Focus Toward Children
According to the Ministry, public health attention on healthy eating and non-communicable disease prevention has historically concentrated on adults, but must now be extended more deliberately to include children.
Dr Adam explained that dietary patterns established early in childhood, particularly the introduction of sugary foods at a young age, tend to persist into adulthood, making later behavioural change considerably more difficult.
“When we have children and want to give them food, mostly we start introducing them from the early stages with sugary things, and so when they start eating sugary things and grow with it, to ask them to change at a certain point in their life becomes very difficult,”
Dr Hafez Adam,
Dr Adam was candid in acknowledging that government cannot single-handedly resolve the growing burden of non-communicable diseases in Ghana, describing the Ministry of Health as the first to admit this limitation.
He said this recognition underpins the Ministry’s broader call for stronger collaboration across multiple sectors of Ghanaian society to address the issue collectively.
Unhealthy Diets Identified as A Key Contributing Factor
The Ministry noted that increasing consumption of foods high in sugar, salt and unhealthy fats remains among the significant factors contributing to Ghana’s non-communicable disease burden.
With more children and young people becoming exposed to unhealthy dietary patterns, the Ministry said health authorities and civil society organisations are increasingly calling for clearer nutritional information to support informed consumer decision-making.
According to the Ministry, the newly introduced mass media campaign on front-of-pack warning labelling is specifically intended to make it easier for consumers to quickly identify food products containing excessive amounts of sugar, salt or unhealthy fats, without requiring detailed nutritional analysis or specialised knowledge.
Prevention Positioned as Central to The Strategy
The Ministry emphasised that preventive health remains central to its broader approach to tackling non-communicable diseases, arguing that clear, understandable information empowers Ghanaians to make dietary choices that reduce their risk of developing these conditions in the first place.
“Preventive health is key, and we can prevent non-communicable diseases if we have clear information that we can understand as Ghanaians, to help us make the choices we need to make,”
MoH
Central to the campaign’s public messaging is the assertion that every Ghanaian has the right to know precisely what is contained in the food they consume.
The Ministry cautioned that many everyday food products may contain higher levels of sugar, salt or fat than consumers realise, potentially posing long-term health risks without clear labelling to alert them at the point of purchase.
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