FSSAI should ensure that consumers know what they are eating

Rapid urbanization is greatly influencing people’s food consumption patterns with inclinations increasing towards packaged and processed food items. India’s consumption is still pretty low when compared to western countries especially the US, wherein such foods make up for almost 70% of the country’s diet; however, consumer preferences seem to indicate a growing preference to western packaged foods over Indian foods. There is also a move to label foods in India based on their fat, salt, and sugar content. Most traditional and indigenous Indian foods usually contain salt, sugar, jaggery, ghee, oil, and spices that are essential for not only their taste but also have elements uniquely required for the Indian climate. For past few years, in India, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has been pushing for the proposal of interpretative food labels under front of package labelling regulations i.e., marking food items as ‘good-food’, ‘not-good food’, ‘one-star food’, ‘red-marked food’, etc., based on their salt, sugar, and fat content. There are also discussions around recommending higher taxation on foods that have sugar, fat, salt and front-of-the pack labelling in their endeavor to tackle rising obesity. Most of the snacks like bhujiya or banana chips will contain salt and fat, and sweets like rasgulla and mysore pak will contain sugar. Even summer beverages like jaljeera, nimbu pani, lassi, and chaach will have sugar/salt and food accompaniments like pickle or chutney will have salt and fat contents.

Another category of other indigenous traditional foods such as parathas and thepla may contain salt and fat. Therefore, if one were to peek into what is in store in future, you may most likely see your favourite Indian indigenous foods and specialties emerging from different states being marked in red and labeled as ‘not good food’ and getting levied higher tax rate making them costly and beyond reach of common man. So, will this be a practica

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