Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia must urgently reform its food and nutrition policies, especially for young children, to improve long-term health and development, says economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram.
Speaking at EPF’s International Social Wellbeing Conference here today, the Khazanah Research Institute adviser said many government nutrition programmes were low in quality and did not meet basic dietary needs.
He also criticised the government’s reliance on market mechanisms like the sugar tax, saying these alone were insufficient.
“The sugar tax is not working well. We need real rules and changes in how people eat,” he said in his keynote speech for the session titled “Living Longer: Is Malaysia Ready for the Challenges Ahead?”
“People must be encouraged to eat fresh, healthy food again. Not everything can be solved by taxes.”
In 2019, Malaysia introduced a sugar tax of RM0.40 per litre for sweetened beverages which it raised to RM0.50 in 2024, with plans to hike it to RM0.90 this year.
While the tax has led to some product reformulation, its impact on public health remains under debate.
Jomo described Malaysia’s surging diabetes rates as a serious warning sign, saying prevalence had tripled since the 1980s, with nearly one in four adults now living with the disease.
“This shows that our past health campaigns have failed. We must act before it gets worse,” he said.
He cited the 1970s village midwife programme as an example of an effective, low-cost public health policy that reduced maternal and child mortality but was never scaled up.
“These ideas worked well before. But we didn’t build on them,” he said.
He urged the government to adopt a “whole-of-government and whole-of-society” approach to issues such as poor nutrition, ageing, and unequal access to care.
“This should not be led by companies trying to sell products,” he said. “We need to talk about real solutions for everyone’s health and well-being.”
