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No more than 12% of beverages and 16% of foods sold by nine leading Indian food and beverage companies were of “high nutritional quality”, according to the Access to Nutrition Index India Spotlight, 2016, the first survey of its kind.
The index, created by Access to Nutrition Foundation, a Dutch nonprofit, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , evaluated the manufacturers’ policies, practices, nutritional disclosures in India and globally. The nine companies assessed said they were committed to combat undernutrition, but most did not produce or produced very few fortified packaged food products.
Fortification is the process of addition of micronutrients–vitamins and minerals–to foods to tackle nutritional deficiency. It is known to be an affordable and efficient way to improve micronutrient status in a population.
India is facing two opposing nutritional challenges: Malnutrition and increasing obesity, especially among children, as IndiaSpend reported in April 2016.
As many as 38.4% of India’s under five children are stunted, meaning low weight for height–the highest such proportion of stunted children globally–according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 (NFHS-4), the latest available data.
At the same time, 135 million Indians are obese, according to this 2015 Indian Council of Medical Research study.
The consumption of packaged foods is increasing steadily nationwide, especially in urban areas, and the new nutrition index found that most do not address India’s twin nutritional challenges.
The products of Delhi’s Mother Dairy were ranked the healthiest of the nine companies assessed because 77% of their sales came from drinking milk products. Hindustan Unilever and Britannia were ranked second and third. Nestlé India was ranked seventh.
Read more at: http://www.sify.com/finance/leading...rition-challenge-news-food-rdos55ghecfjd.html
The index, created by Access to Nutrition Foundation, a Dutch nonprofit, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , evaluated the manufacturers’ policies, practices, nutritional disclosures in India and globally. The nine companies assessed said they were committed to combat undernutrition, but most did not produce or produced very few fortified packaged food products.
Fortification is the process of addition of micronutrients–vitamins and minerals–to foods to tackle nutritional deficiency. It is known to be an affordable and efficient way to improve micronutrient status in a population.
India is facing two opposing nutritional challenges: Malnutrition and increasing obesity, especially among children, as IndiaSpend reported in April 2016.
As many as 38.4% of India’s under five children are stunted, meaning low weight for height–the highest such proportion of stunted children globally–according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 (NFHS-4), the latest available data.
At the same time, 135 million Indians are obese, according to this 2015 Indian Council of Medical Research study.
The consumption of packaged foods is increasing steadily nationwide, especially in urban areas, and the new nutrition index found that most do not address India’s twin nutritional challenges.
The products of Delhi’s Mother Dairy were ranked the healthiest of the nine companies assessed because 77% of their sales came from drinking milk products. Hindustan Unilever and Britannia were ranked second and third. Nestlé India was ranked seventh.
Read more at: http://www.sify.com/finance/leading...rition-challenge-news-food-rdos55ghecfjd.html
