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Tonight, Belize has a brand new national policy document on nutrition.

That policy aims to improve Belize's approach to nutrition and to promote healthier lifestyles for Belizeans. And according to a release from the Ministry of Health, Its overall goal is to, quote: "Enhance the population's nutritional status by reducing malnutrition, (and) promoting healthy eating habits..."

Now, the Ministry's newly formed Nutrition Unit is set to provide support to regional and international mandates, such as: the Front of Package Warning Label, the Code for Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes, the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, Wellness Week, school feeding programs, and food fortification.

It's all part of the plan to reduce hypertension, Diabetes and other Non-communicable diseases in Belize's population, 7News was at the launch and spoke to the Ministers of Health and Education about this overall commitment to health through nutrition.

Francis Fonseca, Minister Of Education And Culture
" This is so critically important to education, you know, and it compliments the work that we are doing at the Ministry of education, as you all may know. We have launched the national health start feeding program, which is an effort from, by the government of Belize to provide you know a healthy meal to all of our students across the country, at least one healthy meal, a nutritious meal, and so that is what this nutrition policy is all about of course this is for the entire country, umm, Belize has been documented in the policy. Now, we are facing a crisis really when it comes to what they call the NCD's these Non-communicable diseases, as you all know very well, we see it every day, you know people are in desperate need of health care because of chronic diseases whether it is kidney failure, umm, diabetes all of this, you know heart conditions, um people dying from strokes, umm cancer of course. So, you know it's an ongoing challenge for all of us and certainly, in terms of the Ministry of Education, we see a unique opportunity where we have over 100,000 students in our education system from preschool to University. We see that as a critical opportunity for us to engage with those students make sure they learn healthy eating habbits from the very begining and they carry those habbits throughout thier lives and that will improve our health as a nation."

Kevin Bernard, Minister Of Health
"Well one of things as why we launch this policy and I think it displays the commitment of the government and the Ministry of Health being the leading agency within this for us to insure that we could promote healthy living, as I mentioned in my message it's not just the matter of living it is the way we eat, the things we eat that makes us healthy and so it's very critical, we have taken steps as a Cabinet to, to. When I took the paper to Cabinet a few months back to discuss the issue of the unhealthy drinks and sugary drinks in schools and so we are working very much closely with the Ministry of education, there is a task force set up working with Ministry of agriculture for us to promote healthy living, we need to reduce the non-communicable diseases that are affecting us like Mal-nutrition and under nutrition leads these same health issues that you talk about like hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and you saw the statistics highlighted in the mix study that Dr. Cuellar highlighted in his presentation and so for me it is critical, we want to work togteher with ll our stakeholders: the Diabetes Association, The Cancer Association, The Cancer Society and of course working togther with the Ministry makes this policy launch today even more critical and we must do everything in our power with the resources we have but also demand more when we can because if we are serious about reducing these ncd's in our country we need to invest the money in health and in reducing the effects and the prevailing factors that causes these NCD's."

Support for this first of its kind national nutrition policy was garnered through substantial contributions from the European Union, the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the Institute for Nutrition for Central America and Panama.