Soon, when you go into a store and see a pack of chips or biscuits, the ‘stars’ would shine light on the fact if you are making a healthy or an unhealthy choice.
The proposed 5-star rating system for packaged food items would indicate that the chips have two stars, for example, due to high sodium content, or biscuits have three stars for high sugar and moderate fibre content. Akin to star ratings on electronic appliances such as air-conditioners and refrigerators indicating energy efficiency, the stars on food packs would indicate just how nutritionally prudent choice you made with your buy.
The star rating system has been recommended following an exhaustive research covering more than 20,000 respondents across India by a team of IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A) professors Arvind Sahay and Ranjan Kumar Ghosh along with doctoral student Rahul Sanghvi at Dexter Consultancy.
Once implemented, India would soon join several other countries in introducing front-of-pack labelling (FOPL) on the food items to inform the consumers about nutritional values in the pack.
The research report ‘Consumer preferences for different nutrition front-of-pack labels in India’ has been recently uploaded on the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) website. Sources close to the development said that after consultation with all stakeholders on recommendations, the system is likely to be introduced soon.
Ghosh said that it’s mandatory to show the contents of the pack. “But whenever a consumer decides to make a purchase of a pack of chips or biscuits or packed snacks, we don’t generally check the fine print on nutritional value or content of fat, sugar or salt,” he said. “Even if a few do, there are no indicators whether the values are within the acceptable range.”
The report mentioned that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) contribute to 58.7 lakh deaths in India annually, which is about 60% of all deaths.
The report said, “Easy availability of energy-dense foods high in saturated fat, sugar and salt is one of the leading factors contributing to the rise in obesity and NCDs.”
Across the globe, some methods of FOPL include Health Star Rating (HSR), Nutriscore, Warning label, Multiple Traffic Lights (MTL) and Monochrome guideline daily amount (GDA). For the team at IIM-A, the challenge was to recommend a system that can be ‘comprehensible, acceptable and yet effective’ keeping in mind the regional and linguistic diversity of India.
“We thus devised an elaborate randomized sampling trial across India (20,564 respondents across 20 states in India, possibly the largest such randomized control trial (RCT) study in the world to understand suitability of FOPLs), covering all the states, all educational profiles, all age groups, and a broad spectrum of occupations. professions, all strata of monthly income, male and female and urban and rural populations to ascertain how FOPL can be made effective,” said Prof Sahay, adding that the study covered all five popular methods of FOPL and also no FOPL system.
The consumers were asked whether they could easily identify the contents on the pack, understanding its health implications, and presence of excess or unwanted nutrient among others.
The researchers said that the star system was found to be the most accepted across different groups, followed by warning labels and colour-based warning (red, orange, green). They added that the presence of FOPL did affect the consumer purchase behaviour. Those with existing health conditions also welcomed the concept.
Story by Hareshkumar Suthar
Read all the Latest Lifestyle News and Breaking News here
Comments
0 comment