Abstract
Availability of less-healthy packaged food and beverage products has been implicated as an important driver of obesity and diet-related disease. An increasing number of packaged foods and beverages are sold in India. Our objective was to evaluate the healthiness of packaged foods sold by India’s largest manufacturers. Healthiness was assessed using the Australian Health Star Rating (HSR) system and the World Health Organization’s European Regional Office (WHO Euro) Nutrient Profile Model. Sales-value-weighted mean healthiness and the proportions of “healthy” products (using a validated HSR cut-off of ≥3.5, and products meeting WHO Euro criteria as healthy enough to market to children) were calculated overall, by company and by food category. Nutrient information for 943 products sold by the 11 largest Indian manufacturers was obtained from nutrient labels, company websites or directly from the manufacturer. Healthiness was low overall (mean HSR 1.8 out of 5.0 stars) with a low proportion defined as “healthy” by both HSR (17%) and also by WHO Euro criteria (8%). There were marked differences in the healthiness of similar products within food categories. Substantial variation between companies (minimum sales-value-weighted mean HSR 0.5 for Company G, versus maximum HSR 3.0 for Company F) was a result of differences in the types of products sold and the nutritional composition of individual products. There are clear opportunities for India’s largest food companies to improve both the nutritional quality of individual products and to improve their product mix to include a greater proportion of healthy products.
Highlights
IntroductionWhile 800 million people still go hungry, there are 1.9 billion adults and 42 million children who are overweight or obese [1]
Malnutrition in all its forms is a leading cause of death and disease globally [1]
Our objective was to use nutrient profiling to examine the healthiness of products made available by the largest food and beverage manufacturers in India
Summary
While 800 million people still go hungry, there are 1.9 billion adults and 42 million children who are overweight or obese [1] Countries such as India face a “double burden” of malnutrition: experiencing ongoing high rates of undernutrition, while simultaneously facing a rapid rise in overweight-, obesity- and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). India ranks third after the US and China in the number of obese people in the population, and 22% of children and adolescents are classified as overweight or obese [2]. Together these conditions incur huge economic and health costs [1].
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