Inside India’s reluctance to control junk food

Both types of food consumed by the volunteers contained similar amounts of sugar, fat and calories. Throughout the study, participants exercised as average adults, wore loose-fitting clothing — blinding them to any weight gain — and were asked to eat as much or as little as they wanted.

The results were surprising: On the ultra-processed diet, participants ate about 500 more calories per day than those on the unprocessed diet. They also ate faster on the ultra-processed diet and gained an average of about 0.9 kg, while they lost weight on the unprocessed diet (14 days on the UPF diet followed by 14 days on the non-UPF diet). Researchers led by Kevin de Hall offered an interesting hypothesis: Perhaps, the sensory properties of highly-processed foods—soft foods that are easy to chew and swallow—may speed up the rate of eating and increase satiety signals to the brain. There is a delay, which in turn prompts them to eat more. Remember that feeling of emptying a pack of chips and still longing for more?

The randomized controlled trial was the first to demonstrate causation: that a diet rich in UPF leads people to overeat and gain weight. Something that nutritionists have for years been blaming ultra-processed diets for the global boom in non-communicable diseases, such as Diabetes And high blood pressure.

Passive modern consumers sit for meals of pre-prepared or fast food, facing platters covered with inert, unknown substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravid, ground, pulped, strained, mixed, precooked and has been cleared. Agronomist, poet, and author Wendell Berry wrote in an essay that what any part of any creature resembles. pleasures of eating. “Food industrialists have persuaded lakhs of consumers to give priority to ready-made meals. They will grow, distribute and cook your food for you and, like your mother, beg you to eat it. That they don’t yet offer to put it in your mouth, already chewed, simply because they haven’t found a profitable way to do so.”

Published in 1990, Berry’s essay hit shelves long before the world’s attention to the dangers of processed food, let alone defining the UPF. Three decades later, almost half of the calories consumed by the average American or British citizen come from ultra-processed food. And emerging economies like India are in a transitory phase, which is gaining momentum.

Data from Euromonitor International shows that sales of UPF products in India increased from about 4.1 grams (grams) to 11.2 grams per person per day between 2006 and 2019. During this period, sales of carbonated and sweetened beverages increased more than fourfold, from 4.4 milliliters (ml) to 18 milliliters per person per day. According to the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey conducted by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the United Nations, the most troubling numbers are this: one in ten school-going children was found to have pre-diabetes, while one in twenty had high There was blood pressure. International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), released in 2019. The prevalence of pre-diabetic children in the age group 5-9 is alarmingly high in states such as Gujarat (21%), Odisha (19%), Kerala (19%), Madhya Pradesh (17%) and Chhattisgarh (15%).

In this state of emergency, India’s food regulators have done little precious work. Guidelines on front-of-pack labels have been created for seven long years to warn consumers about unhealthy levels of sugar, salt, and fat in packaged foods; In addition, India is yet to regulate the promotion and marketing of ultra-processed junk food even to children. Meanwhile, consumers are happily buying sugar-laden fruit juices, thinking they are healthier than carbonated drinks. Some brands are fortifying junk food with vitamins to make it appear healthier.

Harshpal Singh Sachdev, Professor and Senior Consultant, Clinical Epidemiology at Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research, New Delhi, said, “We have some distance to go to reach the level of UPF consumption in developed countries, so now is the time to act. there is time. “Even children who are considered malnourished by physical characteristics such as height and weight are showing signs of metabolic obesity, which means they are at increased risk of developing diabetes and high blood pressure later in life. Is.”

To add to this, nutritionists and physicians say they are treating increasing cases of childhood obesity, such as fatty liver, graying of hair, obstructive sleep apnea, hip dislocation and polycystic ovaries (among young girls). ).

stretching legs

A recent study for Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) shows why India needs to act fast. Research by The Nutrition Alchemy, published in December last year, assessed the nutritional properties of more than 1,300 samples of packaged food to test how many of these exceeded the recommended limits of sugar, salt and fat.

More than 95% of products failed the test because they exceeded limits on at least one parameter. For flavored milk, 73% of samples exceeded 1.6 times the limit for added sugar (5 g per 100 ml). The ice cream had more than double the limit for total sugar (12 grams per 100 ml). Chocolate contains 8 times the recommended threshold for sugar and four times the threshold for fat (8 grams per 100 grams). Ready-to-eat snacks have four times the fat limit and three times the salt limit (250 milligrams per 100 grams). The crme biscuits had six times the recommended level for sugar and 2.4 times higher for fat. Nearly twice the recommended level of sugar was found in fruit drinks.

The report’s advice was simple: Regulate the industry to control and reduce the amount of fat, sugar and salt in pre-packaged food products. Importantly, damning numbers from the report show that most ultra-processed packaged foods have exceeded recommended limits, which is probably why the food industry is protesting front-of-pack warning labels. That is why the draft Labeling and Display Rules of FSSAI released in 2018 still remains a draft.

Even more shocking is that, earlier this year, a working group of FSSAI substantially relaxed the thresholds that would have helped industrial food products avoid warning labels. For example, the sugar limit in chocolate was increased from 6 g to 35 g (per 100 g serving), while for hard candy it was increased to 50 g. For snacks such as potato chips, the salt limit was increased from 250 mg to 400 mg. However, after strong criticism, the FSSAI decided to drop the limits proposed by the working group.

FSSAI Chief Executive Officer Arun Singhal told Mint that a scientific panel is now working on easing the number of food categories (currently there are 115 sub-categories for food and beverages) and related limits.

Meanwhile, the food safety regulator held several rounds of talks with industry and consumer groups earlier this year. At a meeting on June 30, where industry participants outnumbered non-profits by a large margin (27 to 8), the industry spoke in favor of the monochrome guideline daily amount (GDA) label, while consumer groups warned. Wanted labels that are easy for consumers to understand. GDA labels show the total amount of energy and nutrients as a percentage of what a typical healthy adult should eat daily, while warning labels only state which nutrients are more or less in packaged foods. The industry also pushed for ‘positive nutrients’ on the label, which was strongly opposed by consumer groups because the purpose of the front-of-pack label is to warn consumers of negative ingredients, not to treat them with fortified foods such as iron and iron. persuade to buy. Vitamins. This author reviewed a copy of the minutes of the meeting.

For now, FSSAI is awaiting the results of a study by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad on consumer response to different types of front-of-pack labels, which is expected by January next year. This study, and the thresholds on the scientific panel’s recommendations, which are also expected by January, mean that the FSSAI could prepare a draft on labeling rules for public consultation by mid-2222. Therefore, warning labels on packaged food are at least a year away.

Ironically, while food manufacturers have successfully stopped the introduction of warning labels, they often put labels such as ‘genuine’, ‘natural’, ‘fresh’ as ​​part of product and brand names. This is all fine as long as they have a 3 millimeters (mm) disclaimer saying ‘This is a brand name only and does not represent the true nature of it.’ So, a fruit drink sporting a ‘genuine’ or ‘natural’ label, or even a bottle of mustard oil saying kachchi ghani (cold pressed) on the label, may be different from what the consumer might think. can be too far!

We have been extremely slow to curb the consumption of ultra-processed food, although more than half of India’s children are at risk of developing heart disease and diabetes later in life, said Arun Gupta, pediatrician and coordinator of the Nutrition Advocacy for the Public Interest. There is danger. “Apart from the warning labels on food packets, India needs to immediately ban the advertising, marketing and celebrity endorsements of UPF especially for children. FSSAI should immediately start this work and set a deadline for developing a regulation on the marketing of ultra-processed food.”

global push

While India is dragging its feet on the warning label, several countries acted swiftly to curb the dominance of the UPF. Researchers from the University of So Paulo, Brazil, were the first to develop the Nova food classification system, classified by levels of processing.

According to Carlos Monteiro, who helped develop the NOVA system, a practical way to identify whether a product is ultra-processed is to have at least one item on its list of ingredients that is rarely used in the kitchen. or classes of additives whose function is to make the final product tastier or more appealing. Examples of these ingredients are soy protein isolates, fruit juice concentrates, high-fructose corn syrup and additives such as flavor enhancers, emulsifiers and glazing agents.

In 2014, the Brazilian government asked consumers to stay away from NOVA-4 graded UPF in its national dietary guidelines. This was followed by similar guidelines issued by Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay, all of which recommended freshly prepared food and abstinence from UPF.

Many countries around the world have now mandated a variety of front-of-pack labels such as health star ratings (Australia, New Zealand), Nutri-Score (France, Spain) and traffic light labels (UK, South Korea, Iran) . .

However, nutrition researchers have praised the chile warning label for being the most effective. Warning labels use colors and symbols that can easily cross language and literacy barriers to indicate which ingredients of concern (salt, sugar and fat) are high.

A study published in the medical journal PLOS Medicine, based on data collected between 2015-17, said that after the warning label was implemented in 2016, 43% and 29% of households buying highly sweetened fruit and dairy drinks, respectively has declined. Warning labels were also found to be more effective than imposing a sugar tax.

“In their rise to power, food companies have not only used salt, sugar, and fat in the pursuit of profits through the cheapest means of production. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Moss in his new book titled Addicted: How Processed Food Became Addicted. “Measured in milliseconds, and the addictive power, nothing is faster than processed food in stimulating the brain.”