A recent Forbes article penned by environmental, food and agriculture writer Daphne Ewing-Chow, entitled ‘The Globalisation Of Fast Food, Public Health And Why We Should Have An Eye On Jamaica’, noted that quick-service restaurants on the island are proliferating faster than any other segment of the restaurant industry. It also revealed that half of these quick-service restaurants were made up of US fast-food franchises.
As the industry expands in Jamaica, the health risks associated with fast food continue to be a global concern. The article pointed to the 2017 Jamaica School Health Survey, which found that 24 per cent of the students who participated in the study were overweight and nine per cent were suffering from obesity while 68 per cent consumed carbonated beverages at least once daily and more than 50 per cent had fast food on one or more days per week. The 1,667 students who participated in the survey were from 13 to 17 years old.
There are statistics that validate the global concern mentioned in Ewing-Chow’s article. According to an article on the Boston University research institution website — a paper published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that examined 10 fast -food companies including KFC and McDonald’s that have a sizeable global footprint — found that between 1986 and 2016 fast food menus increased by 226 per cent and portion sizes and calories also grew significantly. Sodium content also increased.
A report highlighted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that from 2013 to 2016, in the USA alone, around 37 per cent of American adults consumed fast food on a given day.
It also revealed that the overall percentage of adult consumers of fast food increased with income.
This reinforces a point made in the Forbes article that the growth of the fast-food industry in Jamaica was being driven by increasing incomes. It also mentioned market deregulation, urbanisation and foreign direct investment as the other contributing factors to the sector’s growth.
The article reports that the Ministry of Health has sought to address health concerns through promotion strategies appealing to fast-food restaurants to offer more healthy and affordable alternatives to customers.
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