"HATING" THE FOOD INDUSTRY-AN INTROSPECTION

Food industry is facing a crisis to day because there is a feeling all around that it cares more for its profits than the safety and well being of the consumers who nourish this sector. Historically food processing has evolved to serve a definite purpose and that is to preserve the food from spoilage and deterioration from many harmful vectors. Food production has been a seasonal occupation and different foods were being produced during different seasons. Surpluses created serve the needs during the off season. The classical preservation technologies like salt, sugar and vinegar based techniques and dehydration are still prevalent to day though to a considerably lesser extent.

The industrial revolution saw a see change in the development of food technology and newer processes emerged to make food more attractive, palatable, diversified in taste, convenient to use and store for longer time. Here is where the health aspect was pushed to the background in quest of other life style satisfaction. To day more than 90% of processed food products serve to satisfy the sensory demand of the body, ignoring the necessity of meeting the nutritional and health needs. The four aspects of organoleptic quality, viz color, aroma, texture and taste overwhelmingly influence the minds of the product developers in the food industry and very little attention is paid to the long term harm that can visit upon the consumers by consumption of millions of unbalanced foods coming out of the industry stable.

Health conscious consumers of to day feel strongly that, in spite of so many advantages to food processing as conceived originally, there exist sufficient grounds to blame the industry for many of the ills facing mankind. There are a few realistic reasons which sound reasonable to a dispassionate observer. According to critics, the further a food product is from its natural form, the less it retains its healthful nutritional properties. Vitamins are destroyed, minerals are leached out and fiber is ignored to be cast away during processing. Though it is grudgingly conceded that the decrease in nutrients is compensated by high tech enrichment and fortification technologies, these add only a small number of nutrients back to a product, whereas hundreds of others are lost in the conversion process from the natural raw material into a ready food to be packed in plastic bags and bottles of questionable safety.

Increasing the shelf life of a food requires the use of preservatives and these may be natural ones such as salt, or artificial chemicals. Since chemicals are specific in their functions, hundreds of them need to be deployed with specific functions like mold inhibition, bacterial destruction, antioxidant functions, etc. Some of them obviously have adverse side affects on some or all human populations. Similarly, to make food more palatable and attractive, many additives are used, though approved at prescribed levels, but with uncertain long term health consequences. Food colorings are a huge category of additives. Though color of a food is an important psychological consideration all artificial colors are not safe for use in human foods. Despite studies that have shown correlation between food colorings and cognitive problems in children, the food industry uses them because they are cheaper than natural sources.

The recent uproar regarding the indiscriminate use of antibiotics by the meat and dairy industry is justified because of the long term repercussions it can have on the effectiveness of many currently used antibiotics to fight against serious infectious epidemics. The inhuman conditions that prevail in many cattle farms, pig farms and poultry farms, the cruel slaughtering practices, wide scale Salmonella contamination of fresh and frozen foods, emergence of GM crops as major input raw materials for the processing industry and many other developments do not help to boost the consumer confidence on the sincerity of this industry. If food processing has to regain its preeminent role as a friend of mankind , it has to collectively restrain its appetite for gaining economic gains at the expense of the health of its patrons, the consumers.

V.H.POTTY

http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

THE "BLOATED" FOOD PACKS-TECHNICAL NECESSITY OR DECEPTION?

Packaging designers seem to be working over time in their "design" to impress the consumer through what ever means possible. The latest ploy is to use over sized bags for packing which in conjunction with nitrogen filling gives a bloated appearance and consumers are attracted to buy these jumbo packs without sparing any time to read the information on the labels. Legally no one can argue that such practices are not right but ethically it cannot be condoned easily. It is unfortunate that the Weights and Measures Act has done away with the provision in force that restricts the pack size to a particular range, making it easy for the consumer to recognize them. To day the industry can market any pack size and it is common to see an enormous range of pack sizes with no uniformity or standard weights that can be remembered by the consumer.

One can argue that the existing labeling regulations compel the industry to declare the contents either in weights or volume or in numbers in some cases. Unfortunately there is no compulsion to declare the price on a uniform unit weight basis thus giving considerable scope for playing around with the figures. Thus one can get the same product manufactured by different manufacturers apparently for the same price but containing different quantities. It is not fair to leave such a situation where alert consumers are left to fend for themselves to calculate the prices on per unit weight basis and such calculations become complex to do mentally as most the declared weights are not easily multipliable or divisible. Probably a time may come when house wives going to the market will have to carry a calculator to make the purchase decision!

This is not a phenomenon confined to India only. In some of the developed countries it is jokingly being said that,"even after being processed, breaded and frozen, fish continue to enjoy the feeling of the open ocean" because of the big size of the package containing ample air space! In a recent survey in a western country it was found that there were many products that filled as little as half their packages, a practice that, even given accurately listed weights, it may look deceptive for any discerning consumer.

There was a time not long ago when industry was striving hard to reduce the packaging cost by optimizing the design and using less of the packaging as far as possible without compromising on the functionality or the integrity of the package. Computer aided designs were once popular for evolving optimum shape of bottles and boxes that can be made using least quantity of raw materials. The unbearable taxation burden, prevailing then, which increased the proportion of cost of packaging in the final product price, necessitated such practices. The progressive reduction in taxes and duties on raw as well as finished products of the packaging industry has reduced the packaging cost from a high of 35-50% of the product cost to less than 10% to day which probably might have provided the incentive for the "bloated packs" phenomenon being seen widely in the food processing industry in the country. It is time the industry is made to declare also the prices per unit weight along with the pack price for the benefit of the consumers.

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