China is to work out a national nutrition regulation to safeguard healthier nutrition intake and ensure food safety among all of its 1.3 billion population.

The country could also establish a national nutrition working committee a planned ministerial government department to oversee the development and healthy growth of the sector.

The regulation, which has been in the pipeline for more than a year and is now under revision by the Ministry of Health, will be submitted to the State Council for approval later this year and could be put into place early next year, according to Zhang Chengyu, assistant counsel of the department of health policy and legislation under the Ministry of Health.

It will become the country's first regulation specialized in nutrition improvement and enforcement following some previously released rulings to protect food safety in China.

The new regulation is aimed at raising awareness among Chinese citizens and protecting them, in order to have a better nutrition supply and intake, said Zhang.

The regulation, worked out by the Ministry of Health, will also be reviewed by related government departments. These include the Ministry of Health, the State Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture, according to Zhang.

But he declined to predict the exact timetable for a final launch of the regulation.

China's top priority in the food sector used to be ensuring all of its population have enough food and food safety, but with two decades of fast economic growth, the problem has been successfully overcome in most regions.

However, new problems have emerged and become more complicated as obesity and nutritional excess have become a serious issue among 16-20 per cent of the young population in large cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, according to Du Yuxia, chairman of the Chinese Association for Student Nutrition & Health Promotion.

"Two groups of people should be addressed with greater attention poor people and juveniles," said Jiang Jianping, deputy director of the experts committee with China Children Centre. China, as of today, still has a total of 26.10 million people in poverty in rural areas.

Compared with malnutrition in rural areas, nutritional excess and obesity are emerging problems among children in big cities, according to Tian Renlin, technical director of soy food with the American Soybean Association's Beijing Office.

To curb the problem, a school nutrition regulation is also to be formulated, based on proven practices in large cities in Shanghai, Beijing and Changchun.

Starting from the mid-1990s, a food nutrition program has been launched in the schools of some of the large cities. Presently, more than 300,000 students consume nutritionally-balanced meals, every day from 50 enterprises and over 200 school-affiliated dinning halls in Beijing, and in Shanghai, the number is 150,000 from 30 enterprises.

"Proven expertise tells us that nutritional meals are the best solution in the fight against malnutrition and nutritional excess in schools," said Yu Xiaodong, director of the Centre for Public Nutrition and Development of China, a government-sponsored institution affiliated to the State Development and Reform Commission.

Regarding the founding of the national nutrition working committee, Yu announced that the new governmental department will combine all the nutrition and health functions from ministries of health, agriculture, education and development and reform commission.

Currently, the plan is still under discussion within the State Development and Reform Commission. "I do not care whether it will be a ministry or a department, but there should be one body in charge of the function," said Yu, but admitting that the plan is still in a preliminary stage and still requires more time to be completed.

Experts said that the plan could face many challenges, as presently the central government is reluctant to add more administrative departments.

(China Daily July 18, 2005)