James Ezema
23 March 2008
Lagos — Director general of National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Dora Nkem Akunyili, said that the agency is being urged to ban sachet water popularly known as pure water. Akunyili said this in Lagos at a one-day seminar hosted by Ify Umenyi, Director General, Consumer Protection Council (CPC) to mark this year's World Consumer Rights Day.
"Some people have constantly advised us to ban pure water because pure water people are littering the streets with sachets. Banning of pure water is the most insensitive thing anybody can think of because pure water production is one of the greatest poverty alleviation programmes in this country". She added that it is produced all over the states and has employed labour that its ban would end their source of livelihood. Akunyili who spoke on the topic "Junk Food Generation:
Influence of Television Advertisement on Children" also said: "Knowing fully well that children are the greatest consumers of junk food around the world, there has been in developing countries a substantial increase in the advertising of junk food, which are high in fat, sugar and salt and part of these adverts are actually targeted on children.
Children are therefore getting very fat". She added that consumption of large quantity of salt at younger age exposes the children to early cardiac problem at adulthood.
According to the NAFDAC boss, salt is used in inducing high blood pressure in laboratory animals. "In fact, in the laboratory we use salt to induce high blood pressure in animals. The best way of inducing high blood pressure is using high concentration of salt". Akunyili said that sugar is one of the additives abused by junk food producers, saying that sugar is bad because its high intake makes children growing to develop fat cells. "And these fat cells, unfortunately, when you start slimming and fasting they don't disappear, they only collapse. So, once they are formed, they are formed. "
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