ABUJA — The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has issued a strong public directive to citizens across the federation, urging them to cultivate the life-saving habit of thoroughly inspecting food labels before purchasing packaged food products. The apex regulatory body emphasized that this simple, routine practice is a critical first line of defense that empowers consumers to make healthier dietary decisions, while systematically mitigating the rapidly escalating risks associated with chronic, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) nationwide.
Speaking on Friday morning during the official launch of the public health initiative, titled the "Read the Food Label Campaign," held at the agency's headquarters in the federal capital territory of Abuja, the Director-General of NAFDAC, Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, stated that packaged food labels are not mere regulatory formalities. Rather, she explained, they contain vital, scientifically verified intelligence regarding the precise nutritional value, chemical composition, ingredient breakdown, and baseline safety profiles of consumable goods—all of which must be carefully scrutinized before any monetary transaction or consumption takes place.
“The ability of consumers to understand, interpret and apply information on food labels has never been more important than it is in today's rapidly evolving food marketplace,” Professor Adeyeye declared during her keynote address to health stakeholders, consumer protection advocates, and media representatives.
The NAFDAC boss drew direct links between modern urban consumer behavior and the current public health emergency gripping the nation's healthcare infrastructure. She noted with grave concern that the unchecked, increasing consumption of highly processed packaged foods—which are systematically loaded with excessive amounts of refined sugars, chemical salts, saturated fats, and dangerous trans fats—has served as a primary catalyst for the unprecedented surge in diet-related illnesses across all demographic sectors in Nigeria.
According to internal data monitored by the regulatory agency and clinical partners, this structural shift toward processed diets has contributed directly to the growing prevalence of chronic, life-threatening conditions. Chief among these expanding public health challenges are hypertension, type-2 diabetes, clinical obesity, chronic cardiovascular diseases, and various other debilitating, diet-induced metabolic disorders that place an immense financial and operational burden on families and the state's medical institutions alike.
To address this challenge at its root, Professor Adeyeye explained that the newly unveiled campaign has been meticulously organized in close collaboration with international development partners and global public health organizations. The multi-tiered advocacy initiative is specifically designed to radically improve nutrition literacy among the Nigerian populace, breaking down complex chemical terminologies and percentage daily values into easily digestible, actionable knowledge. By doing so, NAFDAC aims to equip everyday consumers with the psychological tools and baseline facts required to make informed, health-conscious food choices, effectively shifting the national consumer culture away from impulsive purchasing and toward conscious nutrition.
The NAFDAC chief executive emphasized that checking these nutritional panels must transition from an occasional curiosity into an unyielding, everyday routine for every individual and household. She stressed that consumers must look past creative corporate branding, colorful packaging, and aggressive marketing slogans, focusing their attention instead on the hard data printed on the back of the pack, such as serving sizes, sodium levels, and the presence of hidden hydrogenated oils.
“Reading food labels should become a routine practice for all consumers without exception,” Professor Adeyeye reiterated, adding that a sustained, collective increase in public awareness regarding nutritional information would directly translate into a measurable reduction in the overall burden of non-communicable diseases within the country over the next decade.
Furthermore, representatives from collaborating development agencies at the Abuja launch event echoed the director-general’s sentiments, noting that public health campaigns focused on preventative education are far more cost-effective and sustainable than managing full-blown chronic disease epidemics. The partners pledged their continuous logistical and media support to ensure the campaign's educational materials are widely translated into multiple local languages and distributed across major supermarkets, open retail markets, schools, and digital platforms across the country's six geopolitical zones.
As NAFDAC field officers prepare to deploy across various states to enforce stricter compliance regarding label legibility among domestic food manufacturing companies, the agency has called upon small and large-scale agro-processors to ensure total transparency in their ingredient declarations. The regulatory body warned that any corporate attempt to obscure artificial additives, high-fructose corn syrups, or dangerous preservatives under misleading proprietary names would be met with severe administrative penalties, product seizures, and the immediate revocation of operational licenses. Ultimately, NAFDAC maintains that an educated consumer base, backed by uncompromising regulatory oversight, is the most effective blueprint for safeguarding the health, longevity, and economic productivity of the nation.
