A northeastern Indian state has placed restrictions on the availability of junk food in and around its schools and colleges.
Zaveyi Nyekha, Nagaland’s director of education, said that rising cases of obesity, hypertension and diabetes among school children had prompted the move.
“Schools should ensure that the message against junk food is constantly reiterated to students by taking steps like placing signboards and hoardings in and around the campus,” said Nyekha.
“Schools should also raise awareness by conducting programmes and discussions among students so as to inform and educate them on healthy food and healthy eating habits.”
Nagaland is the latest of India’s states to heighten monitoring of food safety, standards or nutrition practices prompted by the ongoing Maggi noodle crisis that has raged for the last few weeks after tests claimed to find elevated levels of monosodium glutamate and lead in the wildly popular snack.
It is perhaps because the first Maggi finding was done at state level that individual states have been taking the fore in food regulation, especially with the Centre bogged down by the bumbling Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the embattled federal regulator.
A number of states, led by Uttar Pradesh, whose Department of Food and Drug Administration outed the MSG and lead claims, have also banned the sale of Maggi noodles within their boundaries and introduced tough.
It doesn’t help that the FSSAI is reportedly chronically understaffed, according to sources to the New Indian Express, who claimed that 70% of posts in the regulator’s Karnataka state office lay vacant.
The health ministry has submitted a US$276m proposal to India’s Cabinet to fund a reform of the FSSAI, The Indian Express cited sources as saying.
According to the daily, the proposal focuses on four main areas: strengthening the state inspection apparatus, bolstering the FSSAI’s manpower, giving it more powers and providing access to state-of-the-art technology.
“Currently, [the FSSAI] is a rudimentary set-up. In fact, 16 states do not even have a food testing laboratory. The actual increase in staff strength will have to be worked out once the proposal is passed because revamping the state food safety set-up is a very important part of the plan,” the source said.
Elsewhere, the Maggi controversy has brought into focus the “importance of food safety and the pitfalls of celebrity endorsement of unhealthy food products,” according to a leading Indian media researcher.
Writing in the Deccan Herald, Dinesh C Sharma, a fellow at the Centre for Media Studies in New Delhi, also said thatBig Food targets its products to children through advertising to “influence nutritional knowledge and food preferences in children”.
India does not currently regulate food advertising, leading calls for “advertisers and endorsers to be made liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement” so as to ensure better protection for consumers.
“The issue of misleading claims made by food companies, unbridled use of celebrity power to promote unhealthy food products and targeting of children in all junk food advertising, is as serious as food safety itself.”
Dairy under closer surveillance after alleged detergent find
Staying with regulation, the FSSAI has asked all states to keep a strict watch on dairy products, as well as packaged drinking water and edible oils.
The regulator has also called on food commissioners across India to collect more samples of these products and send them for testing.
"State food departments have been asked to be more vigilant and to increase surveillance activities, especially on milk, water and edible oil. Serious violations of labelling requirements have been observed," an official inside the FSSAI told The Times of India.
The directive comes after detergent was allegedly found in Mother Dairy milk samples in Agra. Officials said other dairy products including milk powder, processed cheese, butter and flavoured milks would also be included in the drive.
Mother Dairy has denied the official findings in Agra, claiming the tests had been done on loose samples.
ITC under the microscope as regulators call for nutrition clarification
ITC has been given 15 days to clarify the nutritional claims it authors on the labels of its Sunfeast Yippee noodles line after Uttarakhand officials tested samples from a store in Haridwar.
"The notice directs ITC to provide nutrients profile and lab reports to back their claims of energy, protein, carbohydrate, sugar and calcium," said Dilip Jain, the food safety officer who carried out the operation, told The Economic Times.
State authorities have also asked about the vegetarian certificates of the flavour enhancers ITC uses in the product, and called on the company to provide shelf-life analysis from FSSAI-accredited labs.
Earlier this month, Uttarakhand’s government banned the sale of Maggi for three months after a sample failed local tests due to an excessive content of MSG and lead.
Reduced planting and heavy rainfall behind remarkable cumin price growth
Cumin prices have now increased by almost one-third in 2015 after a surge of 6% last month continued an impressive year in the spice’s fortunes.
Unexpectedly heavy March rainfall in the main cumin growing regions of Gujarat and Rajasthan damaged 30-35% of the crop.
As a result, Indian cumin production for 2015 is forecast down by 20%, with the adverse weather also delaying harvest, says Mintec, a commodities and raw materials analyst.
There has also been a 30% decline in cumin planted area this year compared to 2014, with more farmers switching to other profitable crops due to low cumin prices seen in the last two years.