The Government is launching a comprehensive campaign to raise public awareness on the importance and necessity of eating healthy food, leading healthy lifestyle and exercising, which is dubbed “Health is a Choice! Healthy Food and Healthy Lifestyle for a Long Life!”, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski announced Friday.

“The objective of the campaign is through an educational approach to learn how to protect ourselves from damaging our health, to help ourselves and our families and our society… All global statistics and researches lead to a conclusion that if people eat healthy and workout regularly, then they could rightfully expect to live longer,” PM Gruevski said at today’s press conference in the Government.

This campaign, he added, is not an isolated activity of the Government, instead it upgrades the overall systematic approach implemented in this sphere with activities and reforms conducted at every level.

“The campaign has a noble cause to help, share facts, advice on the possibilities of motivating people to eat healthy, to exercise and to lead a healthy lifestyle leading to a single goal – to protect the lives of people because healthy diet is a decisive factor for overall good health,” stressed Gruevski.

Healthy diet should include vegetables, fruit, wholegrains and proteins combined with regular physical activity that largely prevents from malignant diseases, heart diseases and diabetes, PM Gruevski informed.

“We want to raise public awareness, which is the objective of this campaign,” Gruevski said adding that similar campaigns have been led for years in many countries, including Finland and the United States.

The top global health issue with being overweight and obese is starting to be a growing problem in Macedonia as well, according to him.

Data of the Health Ministry show that 60.5% of men and 47.8% of women aged over 20 years i.e. 52.8% of the total population in Macedonia are overweight or obese whereas 20% of the adults in Macedonia are obese.

“This trend amongst children is a cause of concern. According to Ministry’s data, one in three school children are overweight or obese with 13% being obese. The main reason for this is the use of fast food,” Gruevski said.

The Government-run campaign, estimated at 456,117 euros without VAT, includes logos, TV and radio commercials, media advertisements, billboards, etc.