PETALING JAYA: Malaysia aims to reduce its population’s sodium and sugar intake in order to combat the country’s rising noncommunicable disease (NCD) rate.
In the Plan of Action for 2021–2025 by the Health Ministry, it targets reducing the mean salt intake of the adult population to 6.0g per day by the year 2025.
Even that may be a little on the high side. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended intake is one teaspoon, or 5g of salt, which contains about 2.3g of sodium.
A Malaysian Community Salt Survey (MyCoSS) study in 2019 reported that a staggering 79% of Malaysians are consuming too much salt, at a daily intake of 7.9g or 1.6 teaspoons of salt.
Among the major consequences of salt overconsumption are heart attacks, strokes and other NCD-related health issues.
The National Health Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2019 reported that 30% of adults over 18 are also at risk of hypertension.
Efforts to reduce salt intake include the Health Ministry’s Salt Reduction Strategy 2021-2025, launched in May last year to focus on the involvement of the food and beverage industry to reformulate products with less and healthier salt content.
The NHMS 2019 found that one in every two Malaysian adults is overweight or obese, while one-fifth of Malaysian adults suffer from diabetes.
The same survey also reported that the rate of increase in diabetic patients across the country has gone up from 11.2% in 2011 to 13.4% in 2015 and spiked to 18.3% in 2019.
Over 80% of those with elevated blood glucose levels but not known to have diabetes were aged 60 years and below.
This survey also found that 50.1% of adults in Malaysia were overweight or obese, with 30.4% being overweight and 19.7% obese.
Children between the ages of five and 17 were also found to be overweight and obese at 15% and 14.8% in 2019, respectively.
When presenting the 2024 Budget address in October last year, Finance Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced a 10sen rise in the excise duty levied on premixed sugary beverages as one of the measures to combat excessive sugar consumption.
The Prime Minister said the revenue from the tax would be channelled to address and treat the disease of diabetes, including support for dialysis centres.
On Nov 25, Anwar also called for all ministries to reduce sugar consumption at all gatherings and implement campaigns to reduce sugar in people’s diets.
In October last year, the Health Ministry launched the Sugar Reduction Advocacy Campaign 2023 to educate and encourage Malaysians to reduce their sugar intake.
