Who are the casualities?

Samisoni Pareti
Lately, Fifi—a seven year old—has been pestering her father to buy a particular brand of noodles. When asked why that particular brand, she said: “I’m going to the nightclub on Saturday.”

Like other children in Fiji, Fifi has been hooked by a TV ad of Nestle’s MAGGI noodles promoted heavily on local television over the last month. Footage shows children—a boy and a girl partner—in their party best queuing up before a door with a tough looking doorman complete with a ponytail beside it. This isn’t a nightclub, the commercial said, but kids can apply to join the “kids club” where they can win “kids stuff,” like fancy watches, wallets, MP3s and the latest shades.

Apart from the misleading potential of such ads, the issue of the nutritious value of noodles has hardly generated a healthy debate. Nestle defended its product saying that eaten as a snack, it “provides carbohydrates to be burnt as energy between meals”.

“We have always encouraged consumers to prepare MAGGI noodles with vegetables,” said Jason Chan, country manager Nestle Pacific Islands.

“All our communications including television commercials and packaging suggest preparation with vegetables.”
Chan said their consumers are not silly to be misled by packaging that shows images of vegetables and chicken.

“The chicken denotes the flavour of the noodles and we believe consumers are not being misled that there is a whole chicken inside the 85g packet. During the 23 years that this design has continued unchanged in the market, we have not received any complaints.”

As early as the 1990s, the consumption of noodles—how it was consumed and by whom—had been a concern to nutritionists.

“The challenge to nutritional health workers is to ensure other nutritious foods are added to noodles given their low nutritional value apart from energy,” the Fiji National Food and Nutrition Centre (FNFNC) had observed in 2003. That was the last time the FNFNC had produced a report on noodle consumption in Fiji—the base of two large manufacturers of noodles in the Pacific.

Penina Vatucawaqa, head of research at the centre, said they did another nutrition study in 2004 but the results are still being collated and a report on this was not ready. But the 2003 study revealed that noodles had become a big part of the Fijian diet.

“Concerns have been raised at the increased consumption of this food item replacing nutritious local foods,” said a report of the FNFNC study published in a Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) health newsletter.

“In Fiji, this has become evident in the last 10 years. For example, the Fiji National Nutrition Survey conducted in 1982 did not report noodles as a food item eaten. However, 10 years later, noodles appeared in the top 12 of the common energy foods eaten both in the urban and rural areas, especially amongst ethnic Fijians.

“The survey reported that amongst the Fijian ethnic group—15.9% in urban and 10.8% in rural areas—had noodles in their diet.”

With the results of the 2004 follow-up survey yet to be released, the extent of noodles consumption in Fiji today is only a matter of projections. Given that available data are now more than a decade old, it may not be totally wrong to assume that Fiji now has two generations of noodle lovers. Children of the 1993 survey should be young adults by now, and with constant TV ads on our screens today, newer and younger consumers like Fifi are being recruited.

Initial data—and admittedly there are not many to go around—seems to suggest that noodles has increasingly become part of the Pacific’s normal diet. A survey done in late 2002 in Chuuk state in the Federated States of Micronesia by SPC revealed interesting data. Concerned about the high rates of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in the region, the research looked into current lifestyles and diet.

“Chuuk experiences high rates of NCDs such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke, and also very high rates of vitamin A deficiency and anaemia,” said the SPC report.

“It is well established that diet and lifestyle during adolescence affect not only lifestyle in adulthood but also more directly the risks of NCDs in later life. The target group of this survey were adolescents living on Weno, and the lagoon islands of Tonoas, Udot, Polle and Toleisom.”

That survey showed that consumption of imported food including noodles are found more in the main islands that have well-stocked shops. More people on Weno listed noodles as part of their staple diet. The atoll island of Udot out of the other three islands appeared to have gone into noodles in a bigger way. Of those surveyed, 18% said they ate noodles “most days” while 74% have it on a “weekly” basis.