Photo for representational purpose.
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The dangers posed by ultra-processed food (UPF) have been flagged by The Lancet in three recent meta-analyses that also note how big businesses thrive, placing public health in peril.
The papers expose the tactics corporations use to drive consumption and escape effective regulation. Middle- and low-income countries, including India, are the worst-hit. India is the fastest-growing UPF market, where the sale of these items grew 40 times in the last 15 years, riding high on aggressive pricing strategies like making them available in packets at Rs 5, 10, and 20.
This, experts say, has contributed significantly to an exponential rise in obesity, diabetes, and other non-communicable diseases.
UPFs are industrial formulations of food substances, mostly high in fat, sugar, and salt. They are also high in harmful ingredients such as stabilisers, emulsifiers, colourants, and flavouring substances.
Designed for overconsumption, convenience, and profit, UPFs are aggressively marketed and advertised, exposing children and youth in both rural and urban India to new risks. Shelves in retail stores across the country are packed with namkeens, biscuits, chips, noodles, breakfast cereals, and sugar-sweetened beverages.
While a certain degree of food processing is required, ultra-processing is harmful as it takes away the inherent goodness of food. The distinction is known to the policymakers and was highlighted in the Economic Survey of 2024-25 and in the dietary guidelines issued by the National Institute of Nutrition under the Indian Council of Medical Research. But food companies are moneyed and highly influential. Eight multinational companies dominate the global UPF market, and the advertising budget of three of them, in 2024, was four times the operating budget of the World Health Organisation. It is no surprise that the industry always finds a place at the high table where policies are made.
In India, too, corporations enjoy substantial financial and political power and are the key drivers of UPF consumption. They use sophisticated strategies to block regulation, shape science, and frame themselves as part of the solution. The companies use loopholes in the law and its poor implementation to peddle UPF.
The front-of-pack nutrition labelling is not in place, though the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has been working on it for years. The Advertisement Code hasn’t been modified to curb UPF promotion, eight years after it was recommended in a national action plan. If the government is serious about protecting the citizens’ health, it needs to work on a priority to legally define UPFs, put a mandatory warning label on the packs, and keep a close check on ways they are marketed.