Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Thailand gets WHO recognition to eliminate transfats

Anjali Sharma

GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 30th Jan. World health agency on Monday announced that 5 countries have been awarded for their efforts towards eliminating mass-produced trans fats in food, in a press release issued in New York.

Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand have received the first-ever WHO certificates for demonstrating that they have a best practice policy for industrially produced trans-fatty acids elimination in effect, supported by adequate monitoring and enforcement systems, WHO stated.

The agency noted that trans fats are industrially produced or naturally occurring, and both are linked to an increased risk of heart attacks and heart disease.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that they have “no known health benefit but huge health risks.”

The fried foods, cakes and ready meals where they can be found lurking are often high in sugar, fat and salt, WHO said.

WHO had set an ambitious target in 2018 to fully eliminate iTFA from the global food supply by the end of 2023.

It was not met, the UN agency said remarkable progress towards this goal has been made in every region of the world.

Some 53 countries have “best practice” policies in place to tackle mass-produced trans fats in food. This covers 3.7 billion people, 46 per cent of the global population, up from just six per cent only five years ago, WHO added.