New Delhi: Most of the ultra-processed or packaged food items high in salt, sugar and fat “conceal” crucial information related to nutrients, and depend on “manipulative” or “deceptive” advertisements to target consumers, a report by New Delhi-based nutrition think tank Nutrition Advocacy in Public interest (NAPi), released Friday, has said.
The report is based on a qualitative observational study conducted over the past seven months, as part of which print and television advertisements of 50 popular brands of packaged food and beverage items were analysed.
The advertisements included food categories such as chocolates, pasta, noodles, dairy-based desserts, juices, cereals, breads, cookies and sauces, among others, by food giants such as PepsiCo, Mondelez, Coca Cola, Amul and Mother Dairy, among others.
The analysis said that in nine out of 50 products, the advertisements “lured” potential buyers with extra offers, cashback, vouchers or discounts, and in 22 out of 50 advertisements, advertisers used strong emotional appeal to influence viewers.
All the advertisements analysed as part of the study were found to conceal critical nutrients of concern — sugar, salt and fat. According to the Consumer Protection Act 2019, it is mandatory to mention the quantities of nutrients on nutrition labels.
The report added that 23 of these product brands had prominent actors, singers and cricketers as brand ambassadors.
ThePrint reached PepsiCo, Mondelez, Coca Cola, Amul and Mother Dairy over email for their responses to the claims in the report. This copy will be updated if and when their responses are received.
A study, by researchers at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and some other institutions, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal in June last year had shown that there are over 100 million cases of diabetes in India, and one in every four individuals is diabetic, prediabetic or obese.
In its latest dietary guidelines for Indians, released last month, ICMR’s National Institute of Nutrition said that more than 10 percent of kids and adolescents aged five to 19 years in the country are prediabetic.
These guidelines, for the first time, have also specified that the sugar threshold for all packaged solid foods should be five percent energy from added sugar, and must not exceed 10 percent energy from total sugar.
In the case of liquid foods or beverages, the dietary guidelines said that the threshold for sugar was calculated taking into consideration naturally present sugar in fruit juices or milk.
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‘Food ads can lead to unhealthy practices’
The report highlighted that the Advertisement Code of the Cable Television Network Rules, 1994, says, “no advertisement which endangers the safety of children or creates in them any interest in unhealthy practices …shall not be carried in the cable service”.
Dr Arun Gupta, NAPi co-convenor and lead author on the report, told ThePrint, “Our analysis has clearly shown that food product advertisements can lead to unhealthy practices. We therefore recommend halting advertisements if the food product is HFSS (high fat sugar salt), amending these laws on advertisements to explicitly include the definition of HFSS, and prohibiting advertisements which carry food items beyond the thresholds of this definition.”
He added, “As amendments may take some time, the government, as an interim measure, may ask all advertisers to disclose in their advertisements the amount of nutrients of concern for every 100 grams per millilitre in bold letters.”
Gaps in existing laws
The report emphasised that despite the fact that the Food Safety and Standards (FSS) Act 2006 seeks to prohibit misleading or deceiving advertisement of foods, it fails to objectively define what can be termed a misleading advertisement.
Neither do FSS regulations direct food-makers to indicate that nutritional information of a food product must be disclosed, nor does the Food Safety and Standards (Advertising and Claims) Act 2018 explicitly restrict advertisements for HFSS or junk foods, the report said.
The Consumer Protection Act (2019) has only one subsection that bars advertisements of junk food in children’s programmes. There is no provision, however, on restrictions in or prohibitions of such advertisements in general.
The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 does not prohibit advertisements for HFSS foods.
Similarly, the Press Council of India’s 2022 norms of Journalist Conduct does not prohibit advertisements of HFSS foods in the print media, the report said.
Acknowledging the role of marketing amid rising consumption of unhealthy diets, which contributes to non-communicable diseases (NCD) such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular conditions and cancer, the Indian government made strong commitments to address the NCD crisis through the National Multisectoral Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Common NCDs, 2017-22.
The authors argued that many action points mentioned in the plan, such as amendments to the existing laws, need to be carried out in order to decrease advertisements of unhealthy foods and reduce the NCD burden of the country.
Dr Nupur Bidla, a social scientist and a co-author on the report, said during the release of the report that with the help of the Right to Information Act, NAPi found that the country’s apex food regulator, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), takes one to two years to refer the matter of misleading advertisements to a committee.
“In more than 100 such cases, none of the companies have been fined in accordance with rules even as the FSSAI committee found these to be misleading. This is sheer injustice to the consumers, as such a delay allows companies to enjoy the ‘freedom’ to advertise and make money while public health suffers,” she said.
ThePrint reached FSSAI CEO G Kamala Vardhan Rao by phone for a comment but got no response. This copy will be updated if and when a response is received.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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