Anyone who has had a hard time convincing foreign restaurateurs, say of Cajun provenance, that rice cooked in beef stock is not vegetarian, knows that Indians have outstripped everyone else at least on one food labelling frontier: whether we are supping outdoors or buying groceries, we demand clear indications on whether or not we are being served any animal ingredients. Even the most marginally urbanised of our diners have figured their way around the ?dot? language with ease. Green dot in green box equals vegetarian, whereas the redder stuff doesn?t.
But what about the other category of food labelling, the nutritional panels printed on packaged foods? According to a Nielson survey conducted in April, across 28,253 Internet users in 51 global markets, the country appears to be moving in the right direction. Around 71% of the Indian respondents claimed that they now take more notice of the information carried on food packages as compared to two years ago. Only 65% of the US consumers could boast the same.
As for those who could ?mostly? decode this data, the numbers stacked up thusly: 44% for the globe, 67% for the US and a respectable 59% for India. But what must be kept in mind is that Americans? access to the Internet is not class driven to the same degree as in India, meaning that the US samples reflect a more elite leaning than in the Indian context. A surprising finding of the survey was that in a country with the largest diabetic population in the world, sugar appears quite low on the list of concerns for Indians. One explanation for this could be the way in which labelling is done here.
Check that packet of biscuits lying somewhere in your vicinity. As per regulations, the label should mention the energy value, protein, carbs, fat and so on available in every 100 gms of the product. The odds are that the amount of sugar, because it is so insignificant as compared to the amount of carbs, will not be mentioned. Yet you could be consuming 50-100% and beyond of your daily requirement of sugar in just one serving.
In the last year, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has repeatedly postponed the implementation of new food labelling rules. One of the industry?s main grouch with the rules is that they require an exact accounting of the nutritional content in each serving, which is hard to do because exact values change a little from batch to batch. But from the consumer?s point of view, how does it help to know that a 100 gm helping of say some biscuits contains 58 gms of carbs without reference to a standardised food pyramid? If you accept the USFDA model, and if your body type requires 2000 calories a day, these 58 gms would equal 23.2% of your daily requirements. If a sedentary lifestyle justifies only 1,500 calories a day, just 100 food gms into your day, you have already had 30.83% of the carbs permitted to you. The beer and pakoras are still on their way!
And should the pakoras come with their own calorie count? In the US, in an effort to fight the obesity epidemic, New York restaurants are being required to put a calorie count on their servings, and ?health zoning? is generally expanding across the globe. Critics have challenged these moves as manifestations of a nanny state, asking what comes next? Is there going to be legislation controlling serving sizes as well? Nope, I wouldn?t support that. But a more lucid labeling on the packaged foods which we are increasingly gorging on across the country?a walk into any of those megamarts in Tier II& III cities confirms this?doesn?t quite qualify as nannying.
It?s the least we can do in light of our growing healthcare burden. The Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations has warned that the cost of heart diseases, strokes and diabetes could climb to $200 billion in the next ten years. That may sound alarmist but so do the numbers pouring in from across the globe. Research unveiled in Australia last month shows that the country?s obesity bill has doubled in the last two years.s
renuka.bisht@expressindia.com