Editors and senior journalists in Accra are being called upon to use their platforms to push for the mandatory introduction of Front-of-Pack Warning Food Labels (FoPWL) on processed foods sold in the country, as health experts warn that the nation’s growing appetite for ultra-processed foods is quietly killing its people — including its children.
The call was made at a high-level Editors Forum convened by SEND Ghana in Accra, where nutrition experts, dieticians, and public health advocates briefed media leaders on the urgent need to regulate how food products communicate their health risks to consumers.
Children Are Paying the Price
The most alarming message from the forum was not about adults. It was about children.
Rev. Prince Baidoo, President of the Ghana Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (GAND), told editors that children as young as 12 are now being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure — conditions that barely existed in that age group a decade ago.
“We are seeing children as young as 12-year-olds having high blood pressure, coming with type 2 diabetes, which wasn’t the case about 10 years ago,” he said.
Paediatricians, he noted, initially suspected psychological causes for some of the hypertension cases. They were wrong. It was real, clinical hypertension — the kind adults get — showing up in young bodies carrying 97 to 105 kilogrammes.
The culprit, experts say, is what those children are eating and drinking.
Sugar Is Everywhere — and the Body Is Paying for It
Rev. Baidoo painted a picture of how deeply embedded sugary, ultra-processed foods have become in Ghanaian social life.
“Today is Friday. Tomorrow morning I have an outdooring. In the afternoon, a wedding. When they are sharing, they will give you two or three drinks.”
He was not being dramatic. He was doing the math. With the average sugar-sweetened beverage containing 8 grammes of sugar, three drinks a week adds up to 24 sugar cubes entering the bloodstream — week after week, month after month.
“The body is confused,” he said. “Every time the body is on ambulance.”
The consequences are showing up in hospitals. Young people in their mid-thirties are arriving with strokes. Others are being diagnosed with enlarged hearts without ever knowing they had high blood pressure. Rev. Baidoo said he is currently managing a 41-year-old male stroke patient whose wife does not know how to cope.
“Young guy. Half. The wife doesn’t know what to do.”
The Policy Has Science Behind It
Advocates were emphatic that the campaign for warning labels is not an attack on the food industry. It is grounded in research.
Nutrient profiling models establish safe upper limits for fat, salt, and sugar in food products. The proposed warning label would appear on any product whose content exceeds those evidence-based thresholds — alerting consumers before they buy, not after the damage is done.
“It’s not based on feelings against the industry,” Rev. Baidoo said. “It’s based on science.”
He also argued that the policy could ultimately benefit manufacturers. If warning labels shift consumer preference toward lower-sugar products, companies face a straightforward choice: reformulate and retain their market, or resist and lose it.
“The people will not stop their drinks. They will still be drinking. Only that you would have won and they would have won.”
Ghana Is Falling Behind
The forum heard that Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria are already at advanced stages of implementing similar food labelling policies. Ghana risks being the last in its own neighbourhood to act — while its population continues to absorb the health and economic consequences of inaction.
SEND Ghana, which has been leading the FoPWL advocacy since October 2024, says the cost of delay is being counted in hospital beds, funeral expenses, and a generation of children whose long-term health has been compromised before they reach adulthood.
The Media’s Moment
SEND Ghana is not asking editors to take sides. It is asking them to take the story seriously — and to keep taking it seriously.
Front-of-pack warning labelling will not be won in a laboratory. It will be won when Ghanaian consumers understand what is in their food, demand better, and hold both industry and government accountable. That requires a media willing to lead the conversation.
“Dear editors, we trust you,” Rev. Baidoo told the forum. “We know your influence in Ghana.”
The question now is whether that influence will be deployed before more young Ghanaians pay with their health — or their lives.
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