Are “Free Markets” on Food Playing with Health and Lives of Consumers?
Joseph Stiglitz, in his latest book, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, discusses the negative impact of corporations’ freedom that comes at the expense of many individuals. He writes: ‘…20th century market power and seductive and misleading advertising’ have no moral legitimacy to profit from exploitation. This lens can be applied to food product marketing in India.
1 in 4 Indian adults suffers from obesity and diabetes/pre-diabetes. More than 10% of 5-19-yr-old Indians suffer from pre-diabetes. GoI recognises that increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and those with high fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) content are a major risk to the health of Indians because they can lead to non-communicable diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Recent government data show that 56.4% of all deaths are due to unhealthy diets.
UPFs and HFSS come from industrial food systems that enjoy free market rules allowing deceptive and misleading advertising. Scientific evidence shows that unhealthy dietary patterns drive obesity. Earlier this year, the BMJ documented that UPFs are directly linked to 32 harmful effects on health, including higher risk of heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, adverse mental health and early death. Another systematic review on UPF consumption showed that each 10% increase in UPF consumption (kcal/d) is related to a 15% greater incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in adults.
Uncontrolled aggressive advertising and marketing using sophisticated techniques (sponsorship of sports, school events and celebrity endorsements) of biscuits, chips, sugary beverages, chocolates, cakes, ice-creams and noodles displace traditional and healthy diets.
These food products are engineered by destroying the core structure of real foods by removing fibre and adding colours, flavours, emulsifiers and stabilisers. It turns them into highly palatable and addictive. The tagline of a chips brand, ‘You just can’t eat one’, says it all. Such foods are projected as healthy, and unfettered marketing facilitates profits to go up and people’s health to go down.
Ads are in abundance in media, hooking younger generations to unhealthy diets. Free market rules provide freedom to the few at the expense of the health of many. The latter can’t make the right choice as most have no access to accurate information.
Regulations of print, TV or other media that aim to cut misleading ads of food products have gaps. The Food Safety and Standards Act 2006 has good intentions, but fails to control them. In February, The Lancet published an expert analysis of the existing legislation on food advertising in India, stating, ‘There are key shortfalls, including limited scope of ‘child-targeted’ advertisements and lack of criteria to define HFSS foods. A robust regulatory framework is needed to protect children from HFSS food marketing, not just what is ‘directed’ at them, with clear evidence-based food classification criteria.’ Global food governance, disproportionately dominated by the food industry, pushes legislation to the backburner.
GoI’s National Multi-Sectoral Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Common Non-Communicable Diseases (2017-22) proposed to ‘regulate advertising, marketing, and promotion of unhealthy food to children’. It needs to be put on a high priority. There are two solutions:
Provide warning in simple terms about sugars/salt or fats, if they are high, on the front of the pack.
Restrict marketing and advertising exposure of the citizenry. For both, a definition of HFSS and thresholds for fats/sugar/salt is a necessary condition beyond which restrictions should be in place. WHO recommends strong policies to protect from harmful marketing.
To achieve a stable regulatory environment, GoI could bring a Bill on regulating the supply and distribution of HFSS. If this is not done, it will increase the incidence of disease and create an economic burden on the individual, family and health systems. Stiglitz is right when he says, ‘Regulation is not the antithesis of freedom; restraints are necessary in a free society.’
Dr. Arun Gupta
Central Coordinator , BPNI
Former Member, PM’s Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges