Giving South Africans tools to assess their lifestyle disease risk?

How are WE turning the tide?

In South Africa, Lifestyle diseases accounted for over half of all reported deaths (55%) in 2015. The World Health Organization projects that by 2030, these kinds of diseases will become the biggest cause of death in Africa.

The South African government has come up with a forward-thinking strategy that will seek to decrease the amount of people suffering from lifestyle diseases. At Unilever, we too got involved through our Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.

As part of that commitment, we have collaborated with the Heart and Stroke Foundation for Salt Awareness Week 2017 for the second year running – to help the general public calculate their salt intake. In 2016, the Salt Calculator helped almost 10 000 South Africans to estimate how much salt they eat daily. We look forward to helping more people make healthier choices in 2017.

We are also working on our products. As it stands, most of Unilever’s food products already meet the highest nutritional standards. We are right on track to meet our 2020 commitment: for 60% of all our foods and beverages to meet peak nutrition benchmarks. We have made significant progress in reducing salt, sugar and saturated fat in most of our food products, and we are constantly consulting with health experts on the best way to tell consumers about the benefits.