Processed foods and beverages are silent killers!

In India, where 74 per cent of the population is unable to afford a healthy diet as per the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and it is also believed those who can afford a healthy diet are not eating healthy, I wonder what the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is engaged in when processed foods sold in the country are so poor in quality

Whenever I have raised the question of a guaranteed price for farm produce, a section of the troll has always impounded me saying why the consumer should pay for poor quality farm products. Besides the underlying contempt that the urban population, by and large, has against farmers, perhaps the point they are trying to raise is that not all farm produce is of the same quality and does not deserve to be purchased at Minimum Support Price (MSP).

What they do not know is that the delivery of MSP too is based on quality of the produce. To cite an instance, the price for superfine rice is higher than the normal varieties. For sugarcane that comes with a higher sugar recovery, the prices the sugar mills offer are comparatively higher. Even for eggs, the price for A-grade is higher than the normal. More can still be done, but at least it is not as bland as the urban educated want us to believe.

Nevertheless, those who, time and again, point to the quality of farm produce just to deny them the rightful price, are the ones who are duped by food processing units to pay for poor quality. In fact, they end up buying inferior quality products at a much higher price, several times more than what they would have paid to a primary producer. Just because the processed food comes in an attractive package, with perhaps a film star or a cricketer endorsing the product, does not mean that what the consumer ends up buying meets the quality standards. It is, in fact, much worse.

The average consumer, who throng supermarkets in search of healthy processed foods in malls, fails to realise that much of the processed food products lined up on the shelves – there are roughly 40,000 processed foods in a super market store – what they end up buying is unhealthy or, if I may be allowed to say, poor in quality that often is the reason behind much of the health ailments the society is grappling with. As I have often said if as a seller you know how to pack poison in an attractive packaging the chances are that the consumer will end up buying it.

In an eye-opening study and I want every consumer to read it, published in the open-access trans-disciplinary journal, Globalization and Health (Dec. 1, 2023), Lauren et al have developed a methodology to ascertain how much of processed food and beverage sales falls in the category of healthy and unhealthy. They picked up 35,550 products from 1,294 brands manufactured by the top 20 global food giants. These companies were drawn from seven countries – USA, UK, China, Brazil, South Africa, Australia and India – and one would generally assume these countries will have a sharp eye on the quality of processed foods that is being sold.

The retail sales of these 20 big food companies in 2022 exceeded $7.7 billion. I am sure you will be shell-shocked to learn what came out. As much as 89 per cent of the sales were categorised as unhealthy.

Wonder what happens to the same class of quality-conscious population who raise eyebrows at the drop of a hat when a farmer is selling his produce, but happily ends up buying unhealthy processed foods from the supermarkets. Perhaps it is the glare of the attractive packaging that deceives them to buy, not realising that everything that glitters is not gold. A majority of unhealthy sales pertained to processed food products, soft drinks, confectionary and snacks. Less than five per cent of the sales of Modelez, Mars and PepsiCo, for instance, fell in the category of healthy foods, while none of Red Bull and Ferrero’s sales were found healthy.

The companies that did comparatively better were Grupo Bimbo (428 per cent), Danone (34 per cent) and Conagra (32 per cent) although majority of their sales were still derived from unhealthy foods, the study said.

In India, where 74 per cent of the population is unable to afford a healthy diet as per the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and it is also believed those who can afford a healthy diet are not eating healthy, I wonder what the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is engaged in when processed foods sold in the country are so poor in quality. It also means that unhealthy diet at a family is consuming is actually the result of unhealthy processed foods that reach the plate.

Despite all the talk of conflict of interest cropping up in the decision-making process that aims to ensure safe and healthy foods, corporate colonisation of food is also happening internationally thereby bringing concentration of power in the hands of a few agribusiness conglomerates.

The 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, followed by the COP 27, under the sponsorship of Coca-Cola and the COP 28 by oil majors, points to a direction which in itself unhealthy.

This brings me to another related question. Whenever there is talk of providing farmers with a higher price in India, the prompt answer I hear is the need to encourage food processing.

The Ministry of Food Processing Industries, for instance, has been allocated Rs. 4,600 crore till March 2026 under the PM-Kisan Sampada Yojna. This essentially goes for building infrastructure for agro-processing clusters and for integrating cold chain and value addition infrastructure.

The push for food processing is coming at a time when serious concerns are being raised globally at the link between ultra-processed foods and harmful diseases, including cancer.

A 2018 French NutriNet-Sante cohort study had shown that a 10 per cent increase in ultra-processed foods in our diet is enough to significantly lead to the probability of 10 per cent rise in overall cancer load, including breast and prostate cancer. Despite this startling reality, whenever I have been invited to a conference discussing the possibilities that the sunrise agro-processing industry throws up, I have observed that there has never been a session on the health impacts of ultra-processed foods. In fact, it will not be unfair to say that the economists and others who talk of agro-processing have little idea of the links it has with growing cancer incidences. The left hand does not know what the right is doing!

Another study, published in this month’s issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, has identified 921 chemicals linked to breast cancer. More than 90 per cent of these chemicals are found in food and beverages, pesticides, including home pest control, skin and hair care products.

Seen in tandem with what I talked earlier of 89 per cent of processed foods and beverages being unhealthy, it clearly tells us that while the processing industry laughs all the way to the bank, it is the gullible consumers who ends up paying a heavy price, often fatal.

(The author is a noted food policy analyst and an expert on issues related to the agriculture sector. He writes on food, agriculture and hunger)