New Delhi: An expert panel under the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is reviewing the norms for packaged baby food in India, with an intent to revise current limits specified for sugar, ThePrint has learnt.
The development follows a major controversy last year when an investigation by the Swiss investigative agency revealed that international food giant Nestlé adds sugar to powdered baby food in low- and middle-income countries including India, but not in rich countries.
The report by Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), which came out in April, revealed that in India, where the sale of Cerelac—the baby food brand by Nestle—surpassed $250 million in 2022, all its variants “contain added sugar, on average nearly 3 grams per serving”.
A senior official in the country’s apex food regulator told ThePrint that a scientific panel had been assigned to assess existing Food Safety and Standards (Foods for Infant Nutrition) Regulations, 2020, meant for packaged food items for infants and toddlers aged 6-24 months, and is working on making suitable recommendations, wherever needed.
“The panel has been tasked with studying the relevant guidelines from the developed countries and what norms they have when it comes to sugar-related standards,” the official added.
Another official added that recommendations from the panel are likely in a few months and will lead to revised draft regulation for infant nutrition, which will then be put in the public domain for feedback.
ThePrint reached FSSAI chief executive officer G. Kamala Vardhan Rao over calls and text messages but had not received a response by the time of publication. This copy will be updated if and when a reply is received.
But the FSSAI officials cited above confided that the decision to revisit the baby food parameters was in line with the national dietary guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN) last May, which advised against sugar for kids till the age of two.
Experts ThePrint spoke to welcomed the move saying it is important to promote healthy eating habits from childhood in terms of using natural ingredients and recipes having an ideal composition of age-appropriate diverse ingredients with minimal addition of refined sugar and salt.
“This can prevent long-term health consequences like obesity, diet-related non-communicable diseases, apart from the usual dental caries,” said Dr Suparna Ghosh Jerath, a senior nutrition researcher associated with The George Institute of Global Health in New Delhi.
The grey area
In the wake of the Nestle controversy, the FSSAI and the Union health ministry had maintained that limits specified for sugars in Indian infant food products is at par with the global standards, namely Codex Alimentarius Commission, which takes into account the recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO) while setting food standards.
It was a line also maintained by Nestle in its public statement issued following the release of the report.
Under the current Food Safety and Standards (Foods for Infant Nutrition) Regulations, 2020, milk cereal-based and processed cereal-based complementary foods can have up to 55 gm carbohydrate per 100 gm of baby food. The norms also say that lactose—a type of carbohydrate derived from milk and glucose polymers, a kind of complex carbohydrate considered healthier—shall be the preferred carbohydrates for food for infant nutrition.
“Sucrose and/or fructose shall not be added, unless needed as a carbohydrate source, and provided the sum of these does not exceed 20 percent of total carbohydrate,” the norms further stipulate.
“It is in this specific provision that there is a problem,” pointed out nutrition policy expert Dr Arun Gupta, who has formerly been a member of the PM’s council on India’s nutrition challenges.
“Because this clause allows adding 20 percent of total carbohydrate in the form of sucrose, baby food makers add sugar in these products,” he stressed, adding that his think tank, Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPi), had written to the FSSAI to amend this provision.
The first FSSAI official quoted above underlined that when the regulations for baby food were first drafted, the consideration was primarily tackling highly prevalent undernutrition in the country which led to stunting and wasting in kids. “But the scenario has changed now and overnutrition along with undernutrition has emerged as a major challenge.”
Catching them young
The 2024 dietary guidelines by the ICMR-NIN had noted that while lifestyle and dietary patterns had started giving early warning signs towards the end of the previous century, such patterns continue to follow a trend that promotes obesity and the attendant non-communicable diseases.
Nearly 56.4 percent of total disease burden in the country, the guidelines said, was due to unhealthy choices.
Over the past few weeks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi too has advised Indians to wake up to the fight against obesity. In his monthly radio broadcast last month, Modi flagged the impending obesity crisis in the country saying it was “huge and scary” that nearly 44 crore Indians were likely to be obese by 2050.
Experts say a key reason why people follow unhealthy dietary patterns is because they have developed a certain palate since early years.
Any recipe used for complementary feeding should retain natural flavours of food, so that the baby’s palate learns to enjoy the natural flavours of whole foods with minimal use of added salt and sugar, Jerath insisted.
“A highly sweetened, ready-to-eat, baby food can release specific feel-good chemicals in the brain and lead to cravings for such foods,” said Jerath, adding that overconsumption of sugar in early life can drive hunger and may lead to increased appetite.
One may not have such cravings for a balanced recipe with natural ingredients like the ones made with a combination of cereals, pulses, milk, animal source foods, fruit, vegetable and fats.
Sugars in extra amounts make foods hyperpalatable and make our palates used to high sugar preparations, say experts.
This, especially in infants and young children, leads to a preference for high-sugar foods and these high-sugar foods, if they are made of refined ingredients, get absorbed in the systems quickly, raise blood glucose levels, followed by a rapid fall, soon after which one starts feeling hungry.
So, there is a chance that one will tend to eat more calories as a response to hunger pangs after consuming high-sugar foods. “This excess sugar intake can also have an impact on the mood and behaviour of infants and young children,” Jerath explained.
Eating sugary foods can make children hyperactive, owing to a spike in energy level, this is often followed by irritability in them owing to a rapid drop in their sugar levels. “Baby cereals are ultra-processed foods and are made hyperpalatable with an extra amount of added sugar. Efforts should be made to develop baby foods from minimally processed natural ingredients with ways to retain their natural flavours with minimal addition of sugars and salt, if any,” said the nutrition researcher.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: Why India’s new dietary guidelines limit sugar intake to 5% of daily calories, none for kids under 2