Safety of branded instant noodles-A reality check.

Food labeling can be subtle as well as non-transparent as many consumers find themselves while shopping for their daily needs. For a common man many of the information presented by the manufacturers can be "Greek and Latin" but some at least understand the implications of such "facts" presented through the label. As a critic of food industry recently stated the industry can be the "masters of subterfuge" in saying less than what they really hide. What ever it be, food labeling rules do serve a useful purpose and can be made more transparent through consistent efforts in forcing the industry to be more truthful. Here is a typical case of instant noodles which have become popular, especially among the kids. Look at the label declarations made by different brands and what no consumer can make out are the code numbers mentioned for some of the ingredients used in the flavor mix that is added during the preparation process. 

No doubt the food safety authorities permit them to use code numbers, probably to make the system of identifying food ingredients uniform. But in what way this helps the consumer? This information may be as well not there and it will make no difference to the consumer. It is just unfortunate that industry is given this leeway to hide the nature of chemicals used and help it to sell the products more easily to the hapless consumer! Interestingly if we get a little deep into this trickery, it can be realized that industry has come up with alternatives to the erstwhile notorious Mono Sodium Glutamate ( MSG), once monopolized by the famous company Ajinomoto of Japan. After its safety credentials were seriously questioned, its use became highly regulated and the so called INS 627 or E 627 code numbered for sodium Guanylate and INS 631 or INS 631 code numbered for sodium Inosinate were introduced, essentially to obtain the same effect as that would have been generated with MSG. Incidentally these are claimed to be the imaginary fifth flavor called Umami and industry uses them to enhance the flavor of every food and use less salt in their formulations.   

There are two questions the industry and the safety regulators must answer while allowing the use of these chemicals by the food processors. First are these chemicals derived from meat scraps or fish waste? If so can the manufacturers use the green dot on the label to convince the consumers that their products are suitable for consumption by vegans as well as vegetarians?. According to literature, Guanylates and Inosinates can also be made from yeast through hydrolysis of the cells  or from starchy materials by the fermentation route but no one is sure whether the manufacturers use meat derived materials or plant based ones. Interestingly some of them declare use of yeast hydrolyzate also along with 627 and 631 and one wonders why they have to use yeast hydrolyzate which also contains 627 and 631? Could it be to camouflage the real identity of the source from which 627 and 631 are derived. Why not declare that 627 and 631 used in these flavor mixes are really derived from plant sources to satisfy the vegans and vegetarians? 

Second issue pertains to the safety of these additives. Scientific studies do not permit us to draw any firm conclusion because of lack of unanimity. Several reports indicate that at individual levels, 627 and 631 including their blends 635 can create health problems, at times becoming serious if not careful. If one reads the catalog of ill effects of these additives it could be construed as a list compiled by the adversaries who are firmly "convinced" about these "facts". Guanylates and Inosinates have been claimed to cause in humans several adverse effects like Ribo Rash, a form of irritable itchy skin syndrome, elevated heart beats, worsening of gout symptoms, causing migraine, insomnia, asthma, arthritis, sinusitis, etc. However these claims will have to be moderated in the light of the fact that the levels at which they are consumed through noodles can be well below the adversarial concentrations. Also to be borne in mind is that noodles can always be taken with out the flavor mix which contains 627, 631 or 635. 

V.H.POTTY

http://vhpotty.blogspot.com

http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

THE ENDOSULFAN "MESS"-ECONOMIC INTEREST OVER RIDING HEALTH CONCERNS?

The word "Endosulfan" has attracted national attention for all wrong reasons with GOI and Kerala Government locking horns regarding the need to ban the manufacture and use of this deadly pesticide in the country. One must admire the the 87 year old Chief Minister of the state for his tenacity in fighting for the cause of his people, many of whom faced the health consequences of using Endosulfan for the last few years, especially in Cashew Plantations in the state. According to him more than 400 people had died due to poisoning from this pesticide while thousands were maimed making their lives miserable. While it was the government led by Congress party that banned the pesticide in 2001, this was lifted by the Marxist government subsequently for reasons not very clear. The issue has come a full a circle with the same government banning the chemical again and now pleading for banning it nationally.

What is shocking is the stand taken by the Central government in opposing any ban nationally while leaving it to the states to do so at local level. The Prime Minister of this great country has the gumption to say that unless proved conclusively that use of Endosulfan is unsafe, he would not support any ban at the national level. The over active Environment Minister who finds fault with every new developmental project from the environmental angle, also is opposing ban on the pesticide for reasons not very clear! About 80 countries have already banned this pesticide while many are phasing it out before eventual banning. The Stockholm Convention in 2009 found Endosulfan to be of questionable safety while the 2010 Convention placed it on a critical list for considering a global ban. The 2011 Convention, meeting end of April this year has declared a global ban against Endosulfan. It is ridiculous that the sole country which defied international opinion happened to be India! Leading a charade the PM has "ordered" the GOI arm for health research, the ICMR to conduct new studies to "prove" Endosulfan is harmless!

Why this reluctance on the part of GOI to ban this dangerous substance within the country? Is it the lobbying power of the 3 or 4 private manufacturers which is influencing the GOI policy? Could it be that its own public sector company Hindustan Pesticides, world's largest producer of Endosulfan is likely to suffer financially, if a ban is imposed? It is interesting that India is the "capital" of Endosulfan, producing almost 90% of this chemical and while using about 4500 tons for domestic agriculture, more than 4000 tons are exported, mainly to China. Besides the agricultural scientists have not yet come up with an alternative to Endosulfan that is cheap and equally effective. Cashew industry which exports most of its products has a heavy stake in protecting its flanks and naturally will oppose any ban on Endosulfan. It is tragic that when there is a reasonable doubt about the safety of a chemical that comes in contact with human beings, GOI is supporting the industry ignoring the interest of the citizens. True, a government committee had reported that global agencies like WHO, FAO, IARC and USEPA never found Endosulfan to be carcinogenic, teratogenic, mutagenic or genotoxic but what about other health disorders besides these dangerous ones?

One can imagine the sufferings of a sizable section of population in the northern parts of Kerala who are exposed to Endosufan tainted environment for decades continuously as Endosulfan toxicity can cause a plethora of symptoms like hyper activity, tremors, convulsions, lack of coordination, staggering, breathing difficulty, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and unconsciousness. While sub-lethal doses can cause significant brain damage, doses as low as 30 mg/kg body weight can be fatal in some cases. If the recorded findings by experts in Kasargod district where large scale cashew plantations exist are to be believed, those working in these plantations and others residing nearby have serious health problems which include delayed sexual maturity amongst boys, frequent birth defects and many other series of health problems.

That Endosulfan is acutely neurotoxic to mammals is well known. There is no universally agreed LD50 value for humans. While WHO has determined it as 80 mg/ kg body weight, USEPA has a lower value of 30 mg/kg body weight. One of the main reasons for the Stockholm Convention for imposing a ban on Endosulfan is the ability of this toxic chemical to transport itself over long distance which has the potential to cause significant adverse human health and environmental effects. Imagine the situation when huge quantities are delivered through aerial spraying, a major part of it dissipating into the environment causing immeasurable damage and Endosulfan and its break-down artifacts having half lives from 9 months to 6 years can have long term effect on human lives. As this organochlorine pesticide is acutely toxic, a bioaccumulator and an endocrine disruptor there is absolutely no justification to continue its use any further. GOI must keep its citizens' interests above any economic considerations.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

"FLOGGING" THE "FAT"-A "POPULISTIC" CONCEPT OR "SOUND" SCIENCE?

According to some commentators of modern food eating concepts, fats contained in foods one eats are unnecessarily and illogically being blamed for all the ills man faces to day. Though this is contrary to the present knowledge of human nutrition as exemplified by modern nutrition science, a patient hearing to the view point of antagonists will provide a right perspective to the issue. The publishers of Readers Digest have the following advice to its Diabetes Advisory Service subscribers which is interesting.

"It's rare for the world of medical research to get something so wrong. But for nearly 30 years, one of the most pervasive "truisms" about healthy eating—that dietary fat is your enemy—has been incorrect. In the last five years, a wide breadth of research has proven conclusively that dietary fat is not the demon we've made it out to be. It's an amazing about-face—one with extraordinary implications for how we eat for good health. To understand the significance of this, take a look at your cookbook shelf. How many books have "Low-Fat" in their titles? The idea was that by removing fat from your diet, you'd automatically lose weight. But for many, the opposite has proven true: By replacing the fats in our diets with so many refined carbs, we've not only gained weight, but also launched a diabetes epidemic!" "Today, we're kicking off the first part of a week-long series on that three-letter word we've inappropriately come to abhor. There are so many misconceptions about fat, it's time to set the record straight. Over the course of the week, we'll tell you why you need it and which kinds to eat, as well as the types that are indeed dangerous for your health. Why did fat get such a bad rap for so long? For starters, when physicians began recommending the low-fat diet a generation ago, they simply assumed it would work. Population studies had shown that people who eat high-fat diets tend to have more heart attacks, so the low-fat concept seemed to make sense". "Still, the low-fat diet had never been formally tested on a large scale in humans. Years later, when researchers finally conducted clinical trials with people who adopted the "eat less fat" approach, it flopped. In a 2006 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association—the first long-term study of its kind—scientists followed almost 49,000 women for eight years and found that eating a low-fat diet did not protect against heart attacks, strokes, or any other form of cardiovascular disease. The same kind of flawed thinking was applied to the weight aspects of eating fat. While carbohydrates and proteins each deliver 4 calories for every gram you consume, fat is more than double that amount, at 9 calories per gram. So it makes sense that by eating fat rather than protein or carbs, you'll consume far more calories and will gain weight". But nothing is quite that simple. As it turns out, fat breaks down in your body very similar to the way protein does, which has implications both for weight gain and blood sugar control. For example, fat doesn't raise blood sugar, and it doesn't require any insulin in order to be metabolized (its Glycemic Load is zero). It also takes a while to digest, and therefore slows the rate at which food leaves your stomach. The upshot? Not only does fat fill you up longer, but it also blunts the blood-sugar-spike effect of a meal, even if that meal includes carbs. So why does fat still get such a bad rap? Because people confuse the different types. Some forms of dietary fat are extremely healthy for you—these good fats protect your heart, lower your cholesterol, and keep blood sugar swings in check. Other forms are as unhealthy as doctors have been saying all along. These types clog arteries, contribute to heart attacks and weight gain, and hinder blood sugar management".

If one is to go by this recommendation, taking mono unsaturated and poly unsaturated fats and avoiding saturated and trans fats, as part of one's diet would not do any harm at all. Probably there is some truth in such a statement, though even unsaturated fats, if consumed in excess can do harm to the human body. Also not to be forgotten is the fact that many cooking oils do contain significant proportions of saturated fats along with unsaturated ones and consumers have no choice but to use them in their day to day food preparations. If 100% unsaturated fats are to be consumed such fats will have to be made by suitable fractionating techniques but whether they will be acceptable from sensory perception is a matter of conjecture.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

THE GREAT SUGAR "PHOEBIA"-MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?

In the last 10 years sugar and other caloric sweeteners are at the receiving end, attracting attention from consumers, nutritionists, health professionals and governments world over, for all wrong reasons. There is no doubt that sugar based foods are liked by most consumers, especially children and young age population and this practice has been sited as the major reason for increased body weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) noticed lately amongst populations in some affluent countries. An average adult needs about 2000 kC of energy through the diet contributed by carbohydrates, proteins and fats present in the food. While fat calories are restricted by guidelines to provide no more than 30% of calories, there is no upper limits suggested for sugar.

Since protein requirement is about 50-60 gm for an average adult, the calorie contribution from this source does not exceed 11-13% of total calories and balance has to come mostly from carbohydrates which works out to less than 60%, equivalent to 250 to 300 gm of carbohydrates a day. Sugar and starch are the major carbohydrates present in foods and there is no accepted guidelines regarding the ideal proportion of sugar to total carbohydrates considered safe for regular consumption. While a daily consumption of 44 gm of sugar is suggested by some as ideal to keep away some of the life style disorders that afflict the humans, there is no scientific study reported any where to substantiate this contention. Food industry manufactures thousands of products containing sugars as high as 70-80% and focus has been on these products which are considered unhealthy and dangerous. To prevent people from consuming such sweetened products, radical policies like high taxation and state regulations to control their manufacture are being advocated.

During the last decade High Fructose Corn Syrup ( HFCS), made from corn starch through hydrolysis and isomerization was castigated as villain sparing white sugar from too aggressive adverse campaign. That HFCS contains same mono saccharides glucose and fructose present in white sugar, does not spare it from criticism by its antagonists and fact still remains that no shred of supporting scientific evidence has been forthcoming to support such a stand. Probably the observation that increasing incidence of obesity is almost parallel to the growth of HFCS industry, which may be coincidental, could have provided the temptation to critics to put it on the dock.

It is unfortunate that more than a century of research in nutrition has not been able to bring out the role of sugar clearly in human body leaving the mankind to second guess the probable role sugar plays in weight gain. It is only recently that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) came out categorically against blaming sugar for obesity, a stand opposite to the views of its counter part agency FDA of USA. According to EFSA not sufficient scientific evidence exists to fix any upper limit for daily sugar consumption. Further the data on obesity amongst the population in the US clearly shows that the epidemic is on the increase during the last decade while average sugar consumption in that country declined by more than 10%, clearly showing that the cause lies some where else.

Of course the above news could be sweet music to the ears of food industry, especially the caloric sweetener manufacturers but the views expressed by the EFSA should not be a blanket green signal for the industry to hook its consumers on nutritionally unbalanced products with high sensory pleasure. The key to over weight is often the excess calories consumed, be it from sugar or fat and psychologists have warned that high calorie foods are addictive in nature which should not be exploited by food manufacturers to inflict uncontrolled damage on the society. There must be synergy between consumer need and industry action.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

NUTRITION EDUCATION-NEED OF THE HOUR

Inadequate understanding of the basic concepts of food and nutrition can be cited as one of the major reasons for many of the diseases and health disorders both amongst the poor as well as the rich. Food consumption habits which are formed early in life get ingrained into the life styles of people as they grow and it becomes impossible to change them unless forced due to unavoidable circumstances later in life. India has the typical example of how the population in the south was forced to shift to wheat slowly during sixties and seventies because of large scale shortage of rice which is the staple. The yeomen effort by GOI to make rice like products from tapioca and supplement the natural rice supply to cater to the palates of southern population had to be abandoned because of less than satisfactory consumer acceptability. It took more than two decades of promotion and easy supply to popularize wheat and to day wheat based products like chapathi and allied products and bread have become significant components of regular diet in majority of households in this region. However even to day the preferred choice for many, especially from earlier generation is rice given an option. Another example is that of South Korea which historically was a rice eating country with wheat practically not consumed before the Korean war and arrival of American troops in late forties. Exposed to the influence of the Americans and through a subtle campaign for promoting imported American wheat, that country imports large quantity of wheat from USA with very little local production. Thus critical importance of eating nutritionally balanced food early in life cannot be overstated

In India nutrition labeling is being made compulsory on all packed foods presumably to enable the consumer to understand the value of food purchased or to have multiple options in buying any food in the market. However what is not clear is how many consumers can understand the significance of nutrients like proteins, sodium, potassium, trans fats, dietary fiber or carbohydrates, all of which have important roles to play in maintaining good health. Some awareness seems to be existing regarding cholesterol though many have little clue regarding the exact implications of this component on human health. Many misapprehensions exist regarding bad effects of consuming oils like that from coconut and palm fruits, many falsely imagining they are rich sources of cholesterol. There are so many other misapprehensions and erroneous beliefs that will be difficult to erase unless nutrition education becomes an integral part of formal childhood education system. While positive aspects of nutrition is slowly gaining attention at some of the educational institutions, the importance of hygiene and sanitation also needs to stressed to prevent negative consequences of infection and infestation of foods.

Association of Food Scientists and Technologists(India), during their annual Convention in Hyderabad in 2006 made a beginning with assistance from UNICEF in experimenting with a model for educating children from rural areas regarding the concepts of nutrition and food but it was not pursued further to evolve a national consensus for organizing programs on a wider scale. Country is not short of experts and surely they will be willing to contribute intellectually to put in place a practical education program right from the first grade level. Education being a state subject, it is imperative that the program is made in consultation with the authorities there if to be implemented all over the country. NCERT also needs to be roped in as the educationists in this organization have lot of expertize and experience in the field.

Industry can work at a different level to educate the parents who after all have great influence on the behavior of their children. It may be too much to expect that industry would abandon their business for the sake of education but an enlightened parent is always a better client to appreciate the quality and safety of the foods the industry produces and markets. A simple way to spread nutrition information is to introduce slogans that will catch the notice of the consumers and remind them often, becoming a part of their day to day activities. How can this be done? Many foods are packed in cartons and the outside is invariably printed attractively carrying essential information on the contents. However inside of the carton presents a great opportunity for the industry to print information regarding nutrition and the design should be such that consumers will keep them at least for some time for the message to sink in. Or calendar type cards can be included in the pack containing such information. Industry can also create separate sections on nutrition in their web sites highlighting nutritional information. Same is true with commercial advertisements where at least one or two fundamental messages can be included. There are so many other ways of putting across messages targeting the consumers and over a period of time greater awareness is generated amongst the population.

Industry associations like AIFPA, PFNDAI, etc, food technology professionals in AFST(I), IDA, etc, nutritionists from organizations like Nutrition Society, Society of Biochemists, NIN etc, representatives from Health Ministry and Food Processing Ministry(MFPI) administrators can make the above possible if a concerted effort is made. Years ago when the MFPI was born, one of the priority areas was promotion of processed foods though nothing concrete has been done during the last two decades of its existence. It is better late than never and this is the time for earnest action to achieve universal nutritional literacy in the country.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/