Regulations on junk food in school canteens watered down, notifies FSSAI

New Delhi: A year after the government proposed banning junk food in school canteens and their sale or advertisements near schools, it has diluted the final regulations striking down any reference to junk food or food high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) and relieving food business operators of any responsibility of making them more nutritious.The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the nodal agency under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to regulate food safety standards, notified Food Safety and Standards (safe food and balanced diets for children in school) Regulations, 2020, on September 4. The final regulations have been notified after the agency put out the draft regulations for stakeholder consultations on October 30, 2019. 78008478The draft put out in public domain last year categorically identified HFSS foods or junk food and banned the sale or advertisement inside school canteens, hostels and daycares or at sporting events in schools. However, the final regulations have dropped classification of food in yellow, green or red categories and introduced a new definition “food products high in saturated fat or transfat or added sugar and sodium”.Experts point out that this does not serve the purpose of banning junk food from schools as the broad definition leaves it to schools. Sonal Dhingra, deputy programme manager (food safety and toxins) at Centre for Science and Environment said: “The final regulations do not define junk food or HFSS food. The regulations are now talking about components of fat and sugar — like saturated or unsaturated fat and added sugar instead of total sugar. This addresses only a subset of the problem.”78008482The final regulations have come a decade after Uday Foundation filed a public interest litigation in the Delhi high court seeking a ban on sale and advertisement of junk food in and around school campuses. In 2013, an expert group was formed to formulate regulations which gave the working principles to FSSAI in 2014. “The expert working group had submitted guidelines in 2014 which had few fundamental components. The key was definition of junk food and categorising foods as yellow, green and red and banning food categorised as red from schools. The objective of red is to depict ‘warning’, which clearly is a point of contention. These fundamental principles have been compromised in the final regulations,” said Dhingra. A spokesperson of FSSAI said: “It is difficult to list all HFSS foods in a regulation. Junk food has not yet been defined anywhere globally. Due to these reasons and based on stakeholder comments, it has been decided to define HFSS foods separately in our labelling regulations and include the generic term ‘food products high in saturated fat or trans-fat or added sugar or sodium’ in this regulation.” The draft regulations had proposed portion size of different foods to be served and even specified that not more than 25 grams of ghee or oil should be used for a child. These specifics have been done away with in the final regulation notified. FSSAI spokesperson said: “The clause has been revised since its monitoring at the school level or otherwise would not be possible in light of the fact that a child normally would not spend the whole day in school and would consume a variety of foods within / outside school daily.”The regulation also does away with the responsibilities specified for food and business operators in draft that included reformulate products to improve nutritional quality by adding fruit, vegetables and whole grain and develop new products that help children eat healthy. When asked why these were removed, FSSAI said: “The said provisions have been deleted on the basis of comments received from stakeholders mentioning that food manufacturers may misuse this clause to market HFSS foods by simply reducing portion sizes or using options such as artificial sweeteners in place of sugar which may have negative health impacts.”

from Economic Times https://bit.ly/32aELTk
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