Vinita Bali, MD, Britannia Industries shares with FE?s Soma Das the need for a separate nutrition policy, the need for food regulator to focus on the unpackaged food market and how Britannia is building in health into all its products.
The last decade has seen a paradigm shift in terms of a convergence of health and nutrition products and FMCG products. Britannia also has launched a biscuit for diabetes market, followed it with a low-fat cholesterol free biscuit targeting the cardiovascular disease market. Is the firm pursuing a strategy of making products healthier or are you creating a differentiated health product portfolio?
We are doing both actually. And in this drive of FMCG products towards health, we are at the forefront. In our products, we are removing what is bad and adding what is good. So we first went about removing transfat from all our biscuits. Second, we explored the scope of adding nutritional content to our products and so came our range of micronutrient fortified products. So we have launched iron fortified biscuits. Our ready to eat range, TigerZor Badam or TigerZor Choco milk also follow that philosophy. We fortify our products with iodine, choline, vitamins and so on. Additionally, we are creating a portfolio of specially formulated functional products, targeted at specific population segments. For instance, the NutriChoice Diabetic Friendly Essentials range is scientifically created for that purpose and has a low glycemic index, VitaMarie also belongs to this category.
India is now moving towards becoming a regulated food market with the FDA putting in place a food recall mechanism and introducing other reforms.
If quality control is the rationale, the real problem does not lie with the 9% of food industry packaged and branded food industry. This segment is following Codex norms and other initiatives to control quality. The real challenge is the unbranded, unorganised and unpackaged food which constitutes 91% of the food market and that is where the regulatory focus should lie. How would you ensure quality in the unpacked milk, open mustard oil, dal at your village shop?
Through the Britannia Nutrition Foundation, you are advocating for a comprehensive nutrition policy.
Yes, we think it is absolutely necessary to have a comprehensive nutrition policy. Although we have been running the Integrated Child Development Services, for years now, close to 40% of world?s underweight children below five years still live in India, about 70% of children in India still suffer iron deficiency, over half of preschool children are underweight and stunted. If the programmes running currently were having an impact, we would not be witnessing these disturbing statistics. All across the world, economic progress is followed by improvement in nutrition related indicators. That has not happened in case of India. We cannot celebrate the economic growth story while brushing our malnourished millions under the carpet.
So what should be done and what is the kind of work BNF is undertaking?
Currently, the planning commission is preparing the blueprint for India?s growth in next few years. Nutrition must be made part of the agenda, may be in form of a nutrition policy. We have prepared a report which has studied success stories from across the world and some case studies from regions within our own country. It can be good reference point for simple interventions that can make huge differences. The commission could use it as a starting point. As far as our grass-root work goes, we are doing several things ? one instance of which is how we developed a specially designed 5 mg iron fortified biscuit which in association of Nandi foundation and Geneva based GAIN, was used to supplement the Andhra Pradesh government?s mid-day meal programme for 1.5 lakh school children in Hyderabad.