A new report has sounded a warning bell over international food majors selling low-quality food products in India. Brands such as Nestle, PepsiCo, and Unilever have been questioned for selling less healthy variants in developing countries, which includes India. The food could be harming the public health of such vulnerable groups, research suggests.
The Access to Nutrition Initiative released its report on multinational companies. It identified 30 such companies. And it discovered enormous disparities in the healthiness of products sold across low-income countries and those sold in high-income countries. The average health score for products in low-income countries, such as India, was a dismal 1.8 out of 5, versus 2.3 in more prosperous nations. Under a health rating system developed in Australia and New Zealand, only items scoring above 3.5 are regarded as healthy.
Big international companies sell low-quality food products in India and other poorer countries
“It’s pretty obvious these companies are dumping their toxic products in poorer countries,” said Mark Wijne, research director at ATNI, calling for authorities to crack down on lenient regulations. The index has for the first time made a distinction across the nutritional quality of products depending on the country’s income level, shining a sharply contrasting light on the problem.
The report’s findings come in the wake of a warning by the World Health Organization that obesity will potentially grow into a gigantic crisis. Over one billion people on Earth are heavy, and of these, 70% are from low and middle-income countries. Apparently, this is mainly so in India due to prevalent low-value food items such as soft drinks and packaged biscuits.
Other Indian health influencers have publicly spoken against the companies, including food blogger Revant Himatsingka who is known under his alias ‘Food Pharma’. Himatsingka often raises the issue of health violations in products, such as Nestle’s Cerelac and Kissan’s ketchup, to millions of people. While this has invoked a fair amount of legal wrangling, it also brings much-needed attention to the widespread sales in India of relatively low-quality food products.
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