Time to crack whip on manufacturers

The noose is tightening on the junk food industry globally.
Treating foods high in fat, salt and sugar in the same way as tobacco and alcohol may sound like an extreme solution to fight the adverse health effects of junk food, but that direction is where the world is heading.
In California, the iconic Happy Meal of McDonald's doesn't come with a free toy anymore. This is because the law prohibits dishing out freebies to kids with unhealthy food.
Instead, the food chain offers apple slices, reduced portion of French fries and a choice of beverage, including fat-free chocolate milk in place of the default cola.
A desperate food industry is taking pre-emptive action to prevent more such regulations in other parts of the US and the rest of the world.
All its efforts are now focused on two key strategies. First is the so-called voluntary action, such as restricting advertising aimed at children and to position food products as 'healthy'. The second strategy is more sinister - somehow shift the blame of the obesity epidemic on growing physical inactivity.
On both counts, the industry response is half-hearted. For instance, the India Pledge announced by seven food and beverages companies in July 2010 to implement "company specific voluntary measures on food and beverage advertising to children" by December 2010.
The companies pledged not to advertise "food and beverage products to children under the age of 12 on TV, print or the Internet".
The devil lies in the details. "Advertising to children under 12 years" was defined as "advertising to media audiences where at least half are children under the age of 12".
Nobody knows how to determine audiences where 50 percent viewers are below 12.
The Pledge, in practice, leaves the door wide open for both advertising and promotion to children like before. Kids continue to be targeted both in commercials as well as direct marketing.
A related issue is that of food labelling which can be a means to enabling consumers to make healthy choices while purchasing food products.
While nutritional labelling on product packs has been made mandatory in India, manufacturers are allowed to make health-related claims in advertising since there are no codes or restrictions on advertising of junk foods on TV or in print.
In every television commercial of a processed food product - be it noodles, pasta, pickle, cookies, cheese, cooking oil - the imagery and the message are designed to portray that it is a "healthier substitute" for home made and traditional food.
Product placement in TV serials and movies is an extensively used advertising tool by these companies. Junk food makers are also free to market products in schools.
In a clever move designed to add the "health" tagline to their brands, food companies are aggressively hiring the organisations of health professionals to endorse their products.
Some of these are existing associations of doctors, while others are floated by food companies solely for endorsements and "education campaigns".
Two years ago, PepsiCo crossed all ethical boundaries in the endorsement game by signing up with the Indian Medical Association (IMA) - a professional body of Indian doctors - to put its seal of approval on its some of its non-carbonated sugary drinks.
It is high time that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) woke up and initiated pro-active action on food labelling and standards.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/time-to-crack-whip-on-manufacturers/1/182438.html

Junk food - a recipe for disaster

The younger generation is hooked to junk food thus leaving them vulnerable to heart diseases.

Here's more evidence fresh out of the oven to signal that wolfing down junk food such as burgers, pizzas, fried chicken, potato chips, aloo bhujia and instant noodles, and washing it down with canloads of carbonated drinks is a recipe for disaster.
For all its mouthwatering and finger-licking lure, such stuff was found to contain high levels of harmful trans fat, salt and sugar by a non-governmental science and environmental group. These, scientists have asserted in repeated warnings, are sure-shot ingredients for obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
Dr Anoop Misra from the Fortis Group of Hospitals said: "High levels of salt ring alarm bells since 7 per cent of schoolchildren in Delhi have been found to be suffering from hypertension. Consumption of junk food may be contributing to hypertension, increasing the risk of the early onset of heart disease and stroke."
Furthermore, claims made by the corporate giants that dish out the fast food items were discovered to be false by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the group which had highlighted the issue of pesticides in water and soft drinks some years ago. The results of the latest study were declared on Friday.
CSE researchers tested 16 major brands of popular food products. These included Maggi and Top Ramen noodles, McDonald's items, KFC's fried chicken, Haldiram's Aloo Bhujia, Nirula's burgers, besides Pepsi and Coca Cola. The team tested the products for fats, salt and carbohydrates.
Junk food is known to be bad for health since it is low in nutrition and high in salt, sugar and fat - especially trans fat and empty calories. Companies tend to sell their products either claiming that they are healthy or by not disclosing crucial nutritional information.
"All the food that is sold to us through persuasive and glamorous advertisement, all the food that our film and cricket stars tell us to eat, gave damning results. The bottom line: eat at your own risk," CSE deputy director general Chandra Bhushan said.
The industry, for its part, maintained that it adhered to the current Indian regulations and was serving "safe" food to the people. "We use palm oil because trans fats are so low in it as to be virtually undetectable. Therefore, these results are most unusual. We will certainly be examining them," Rajesh Kumar Maini, general manager, corporate communications, McDonald's India (north & east), said.
A PepsiCo India spokesperson was also sceptical: "Trans fat is produced during the hydrogenation of vegetable oils. We have never used hydrogenated vegetable oils to manufacture our products. So none of them contain trans fats."
However, the tests conducted by CSE showed that fried potato chips had 33 per cent fats. Unlike in a balanced diet, where a maximum of 30 per cent of calories should come from fats, in chips, 50-60 per cent of calories are delivered by fats. A packet of Maggi noodles has around 3 gm of salt, whereas the recommended salt intake is 6 gm daily. Maggi was found to have a lot of empty calories, with 70 per cent of it being just carbohydrates.
The spokesperson for Nestle, which makes Maggi, said: "A good food product is one with a combination of taste and nutrition. Maggi is a source of protein and calcium, and contains fibre. The level of trans fat in it is well within the international recommendation."
The study also found that French fries were full of fat. So, when you gorge on a large serving of 220 gm, you end up exceeding the safe limit for trans fats. Burgers, too, were also found to be high in fat - 35 per cent calories in a vegetarian burger and 47 per cent calories in non-vegetarian burgers come from fats.
Bhushan said a single serving of 300 millilitres of carbonated drink had enough sugar (over 40 gm) to take you well past your daily sugar quota of 20 gm. "Forget your cup of tea, (in terms of sugar limits) you cannot even eat fruits (after guzzling such a soft drink)," he said. Pizzas were found to be relatively safe as they had low levels of salt and fats. But, those packed with cheese were in the danger zone.
The salt level in a college meal, comprising instant noodles, 50 gm of aloo bhujia and 300 ml of carbonated drink, was detected to be so high that it met 75 per cent of the daily recommended value. "Tests also reveal a dirty truth of misinformation, wrong labelling and obfuscation indulged in by companies. Many foods come with a claim that they have 'zero' trans fat; some don't even bother to mention how much trans fats they have," Bhushan said.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) considers a product trans fat free if it contains less than 0.2 gm of trans fats per serving.
For instance, Haldiram Aloo Bhujia, Top Ramen instant noodles, Lay's American Style Cream and Onion, and Bingo Oye pudina chips claim to be trans fat free. But the study found that a packet of Top Ramen noodles had 0.6 gm of trans fat, while its presence in 100 gm of Haldiram's Aloo Bhujia was 2.5 gm.
CSE said consumers were misinformed or not informed several times. Till February this year, Frito Lay's products claimed to be smart snacks because they used healthy oil. The labels then clearly mentioned the products were trans fat free. "But from March onwards, the product ceased to be trans fat free. This was, however, never mentioned in the advertising blitz," CSE director general Sunita Narain said, adding that Lays' American Style chips had 0.9 gm of trans fats in 100 gm of product.
"There is no law to restrict sugar, salt or trans fat. However, the law requires correct labelling. These companies are mislabelling. The food safety authority should take action," Narain said.

Big food brands hide harmful effects, claims Delhi-based NGO Centre for Science and Environment

NEW DELHI: Delhi-based NGO, Centre for Science and Environment, has alleged that leading food manufacturers are guilty of "large scale misbranding and misinformation" by claiming that their food contained zero trans-fats even though tests showed that they have heavy doses of it.

Most popular "junk foods contain very high levels of trans-fats, salts and sugar - which inevitably lead to severe ill health and diseases like obesity and diabetes," the CSE said on Friday. It released the results of laboratory tests carried out on 16 major food brands that the young particularly like, such as Maggi and Top Ramen noodles, MacDonald's foods, KFC's fried chicken and Haldiram's Aloo Bhujia. These findings were disputed by the manufacturers.

Trans-fats clog arteries when they get deposited on the walls of the arteries making the passage narrower, while large amounts of salt leads to increase in blood pressure making the heart work overtime. CSE noted that the kind of food under test has enough trans-fats, salt and sugar to lead to an early onset of diseases in the young. It accused the companies of not disclosing the real contents of their products.

CSE's lab tested samples of popular foods such as potato chips, snacks like aloo bhujia, noodles, soft drinks, burgers, French fries and fried chicken. Their results showed that having just one serving of these foods "completely overturned one's daily diet chart." The National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) and the World Health Organization (WHO) prescribe benchmarks of how much salt, sugar, carbohydrates and fats every individual can have on a daily basis to stay healthy.

Citing an example, CSE said, "The NIN benchmark for maximum salt for one person is 6 gram, while the WHO puts it at 5 gram. The normal 80-gram packet of Maggi noodles that many of us gobble up almost on a daily basis has over 3.5 gram of salt - enough to take care of over 60 per cent of our daily salt intake."

But much more than salt the real concern was the threat from the trans-fats which were disclosed by the companies, CSE noted. The WHO says that in a balanced diet, a maximum of 1 per cent of total energy should come from trans fats. Therefore, an adult male can have 2.6 gram of trans fats per day, while an adult female can have 2.1 gram and a child (10-12 years) can have 2.3 gram.

But CSE found that Top Ramen Super Noodles (Masala) which claims to have no trans-fats actually contains 0.7 gram of it per 100 gram. Similarly, Haldiram's Aloo Bhujia says it has no trans fats, but the study found 2.5 gram per 100 gram. PepsiCo's Lays (Snack Smart) was sold till February 2012 through huge advertisements to say that these chips are healthy because they have zero trans fats, but every 100 grams of it has 3.7 grams of trans fats.

The companies strongly refuted the allegations in the CSE report. Pepsico said, "All products manufactured by PepsiCo in India are fully compliant with all the regulations, including those on labelling, prescribed by the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India)." It said that its products under the Lays, Uncle Chips, Kurkure and Cheetos brands are trans-fat free.

Nestle in its response said, "We respect the work being done by organizations like CSE to improve consumers' understanding of healthy and balanced diets. Maggi is intended as a light meal and can safely be consumed as part of diversified balanced diet." McDonald's said, "In India we take a lot of effort to ensure our food is safe for our customers and have stringent quality processes at every stage. At McDonald's stores we use RBD Palmolein oil which is naturally trans-fat free."

CSE's contention is otherwise. Its report says, "A child eating one MacDonald's Happy Meals finishes up 90% of all his daily requirement of trans fats. The packet of Happy Meal makes absolutely no mention of this massive dosage of trans fats." As per FSSAI rules, a product can claim to be trans fats free if it contains less than 0.2 gm of trans fats per serving but CSE found several brands flouting the norm and yet calling themselves trans fat free.

CSE's director general Sunita Narain said, "What makes junk food so unhealthy are the high levels of salt, sugar, fats and carbohydrates in them. Our new study, which looks at the nutritional value of these foods, is to make people aware of what these foods really contain and what they will do to our health."
FOOD FOR WORRY

CSE report says

Maggi Noodles |

Single pack contains 3.5g of salt; daily recommended intake is 6g. Negligible fibres ; 70% just carbohydrates

Top Ramen Super Noodles (Masala) | 0.7g trans fats/100g though company claims zero trans fats

PepsiCo's Lays (Snack Smart) | 3.7g trans fats/ 100g. Earlier sold as zero trans fats chips but claim knocked off later

KFC's Chicken Zinger | 16.9% fats; McAloo | 8.3% fats. 35% calories in veg burger come from fats; 47% in non-veg

WHO says an adult male can have 2.6g of trans fats a day, female 2.1g and a child 2.3g

COMPANIES RESPOND

As per our analysis for many years, trans fats level is well within international recommendation
-Nestle

We go to a lot of effort to ensure our food is safe for customers and have stringent quality checks
- McDonald's

DINAMALAR NEWS