Progress of Dietary Guidelines in Asia: an introduction

The Danone Institutes are not-for-profit organizations, independent of the Danone business, and whose programs are independent and contain no commercial information. The mission of the Danone Institutes is to develop knowl- edge about the links between nutrition, diet and health, and to disseminate that knowledge to the general public. To date, there are 18 Danone Institutes worldwide.
In supporting the above mission, the Danone Institutes of Indonesia, Japan and China organized jointly a half- day pre-congress seminar in conjunction with the XI Asian Congress of Nutrition (ACN) and held in Singa- pore on July 12, 2011, with the theme “Progress of Die- tary Guidelines in Asia”. Facing a double burden of nutri- tion, the countries in economic transition in Asia need regularly to re-visit their dietary/nutrition guidelines so that they can be implemented and beneficial for the popu- lation at large. Learning from the experiences of other countries may help to make the messages more effective. The seminar was attended by 211 delegates from at least 139 institutions and 18 countries (Asia: China, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Japan, Sin- gapore, Vietnam; and other countries from South and North America, Europe, and Australia). About one-third (35%) of the participants were from Indonesia, followed by Singapore (16%) and China (11%).
Eight experts were invited to present the experiences of their respective countries. They were:

1. Prof. Dr. Soekirman (Indonesia); Taking the Indone-
   sian Nutrition History for the Betterment of Future Generations: Development of Dietary Guidelines in Indonesia;
2. Prof. Keyou Ge (China); The Transition of Chinese Dietary Guidelines and Food Guide Pagoda
3. Prof. Dr. Teiji Nakamura (Japan); Nutritional Poli- cies and Dietary Guidelines in Japan
4. Dr. E-Siong Tee (Malaysia); Development and Pro- motion of Malaysian Dietary Guidelines
5. Mr. Benjamin Lee (Singapore); Dietary Guidelines in Singapore
6. Dr. Celeste Tanchoco (Philippines); Food-based Die- tary Guidelines for Filipinos: Retrospect and Pros- pect
7. Dr. Le Thi Hop (Vietnam); Food Based Dietary Guidelines in Vietnam: Progress and Lessons learned 8. Prof. Dr. Kraisid Tontisirin (Thailand); Food Based
   Dietary Guidelines Development and Promotion in
   Thailand
   During discussion several key topics were raised: Dif-
   ficulties in fulfilling the Recommended Dietary Allow- ance for children; Lowering the prevalence of anemia; Improving breastfeeding practice; Recommendation about milk consumption in Food-Based Dietary Guideline (FBDG), Food choice considerations and commonalities in the FBDGs; and the Effectiveness of FBDGs in im- proving the nutritional status of populations.
   On behalf of the three Danone Institutes, we thank all contributors, and organising committees, along with the Presidents of the Danone Institute Indonesia, Japan, and China for their valuable support of the event.