One of the non-controversial aspects of President Barrack Obama’s recently passed Health Care Law is a requirement that fast food chains and restaurants disclose the calories contained in their products. With obesity and life stye disorders resulting from consumption of excess calories becoming the new epidemic in USA, politicians of varying hues seem to have agreed to this recent necessity.
From 2011, every time one walks into MacDonald’s and orders a Big Mac burger, the consumer will find a label, stating that it contains 500 Kilocalories, staring at him. With the daily calorie requirement being around 1500 to 2000 Kcals, you will be reminded that you are about to consume a quarter to a third of your daily requirement at just one go. Add an ice-cream and you may have downed half of your daily amount with that post-movie snack!
Restaurant and fast food giants are unhappy, but have had to yield after years of resistance and lobbying. The devil now is in the detail; how prominent and revealing the labels will be, and whether they will serve to alert consumers before binging. If the skull-and-bones and “Smoking is Injurious to Health” labels displayed on cigarette packets is any indicator, they often soon stop being noticed by the regular consumer.
A similar move in India may be worth considering. Several recent surveys, including one in Lucknow conducted by the Endocrinology Department of Sanjay Gandhi PG Institute have shown that around a half of our middle class urban citizen are overweight, hypertensive or diabetic. And a visit to these lresidential localities will reveal that fast food outlets are generously strewn in these parts. Also, it may be prudent to focus attention on our Indian sweets and our custom of feeding, gifting and eating them. If ‘Barfis’ and ‘son papris’ started coming with labels of 250 Kcals a piece, and better still, mentioning that one needs to run a mile for burning one piece, it might drive some health and calorie consciousness in us when we indulge and binge around our numerous festivals.
Researchers have found that eating out nd take-aways have become very common in Indian cities, and that people tend to eat more and consume far excess calories when they do so, rather than eat home food. With growing urbanization requiring people to work outdoor long hours, and with women increasingly joing the workforce, this trend is expected to grow. Labels on foods telling consumers about the nutritional value of what they are eating, might help make many choose better options. Low calorie foods, salads and soups could become popular and more often available at these outlets, and taste and choices might change to adapt to health needs and health consciousness.
I wonder whether our health and food departments will take note and move. India already has the largest number of diabetics in the world. A timely innovative move could spare our youngsters much hazards in their later life, by making us more nutrition conscious.
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