The media in Ghana 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, 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 and public health advocates briefed media leaders on the urgent need to regulate how food products communicate their health risks to consumers.
Rev. Prince Baidoo, President of the Ghana Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (GAND), was emphatic that the FoPWL campaign is not sentiment dressed up as policy and that it is rather science.
“It’s not based on feelings against the industry. Even though we have a lot of feelings in us – it’s based on science,” he said.
The proposed warning labels, he explained, are anchored in nutrient profiling models that establish safe upper limits for fat, salt and sugar.
When a product exceeds those thresholds, a warning label appears on the front of the pack – informing consumers before they buy, not after the damage is done.
The human cost of inaction, he said, is already visible. Children as young as 12 are presenting in clinics with Type 2 diabetes and real clinical hypertension in young bodies weighing 97 to 105 kilogrammes.
“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.”
Adults are faring no better. With sugary drinks now a fixture at every social gathering – outdoorings, weddings, funerals – the cumulative damage is staggering.
Three sugar-sweetened beverages across a weekend amounts to 24 sugar cubes entering the bloodstream.
“The body is confused. Every time the body is on ambulance,” he added.
Young people in their mid-thirties are arriving at hospitals with strokes and enlarged hearts. Rev. Baidoo said he is currently managing a 41-year-old male stroke patient. “Young guy – the wife doesn’t know what to do.”
On industry resistance, he was measured but firm. The policy does not destroy markets, it redirects them toward safer formulations.
The Media’s Moment
Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria are already advancing similar food labelling policies. Ghana risks being the last in its neighbourhood to act. SEND Ghana is not asking editors to take sides. It is asking them to take the story seriously.
“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.
Baaba Sam, Project Staff at SEND Ghana, reinforced the crisis with a pointed observation: the information consumers need already exists on packaged foods. Almost nobody reads it.
“How many of us are going to buy a sugar-sweetened beverage and look at the back of the pack? You know it has a Nutrition Facts Panel. How many of us take time to read it? Do we even realise it is there?”
To illustrate how impenetrable current labelling is, Sam walked the forum through a live reading of a nutrition facts panel.
A single container, commonly consumed in one sitting, held two servings totalling 400 calories, with 240 of those calories coming from fat alone. Nearly double the healthy recommended proportion.
“If I ask you to calculate the amount of sugar inside, who would be here the whole day? If you didn’t study nutrition, you’re not thinking through it like that.”
A street survey near Junction Mall the previous month confirmed the gap. When ordinary Ghanaians were asked how much sugar was in their favourite energy drink, most had no idea. The answer: up to 12 teaspoons per can.
Front-of-pack warning labels, she argued, eliminate that guesswork entirely and create a direct incentive for manufacturers to reformulate.
“No manufacturer would want a warning label on their product. And so they would start reducing the amount of sugar, the amount of salt, the amount of sodium.”
