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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Food basket in danger -Vibha Varshney

Food basket in danger -Vibha Varshney

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published Published on Mar 1, 2017   modified Modified on Mar 1, 2017
-Down to Earth

Latest data suggests a decline in the nutritional quality of food. What is stripping our food of nutrients? Can authorities cope with the challenge?

If you thought that your healthy food choices are going to keep you fit and disease-free, think again. The data released by the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), Hyderabad, on January 18 suggests that the foods we eat today are less nutritious than what we used to consume just three decades ago.

NIN has released such data after a gap of 28 years. In the report, Indian Food Composition Tables 2017, NIN researchers have measured the values of 151 nutrients in 528 food items collected from markets across six geographical regions. Down To Earth (DTE) compared the values with NIN’s previous estimation done in 1989. All the food items and nutrients listed in the 2017 report do not find a mention in the 1989 report. But DTE’s snapshot analysis shows an alarming trend: there is a perceptible decrease in nutrition levels in all types of food.

Consider bajra (pearl millet), which is consumed across rural India and is often referred to as the poor man’s staple food. It is consumed mainly for carbohydrate, which provides energy. DTE analysis shows that carbohydrate levels in bajra have redu ced by 8.5 per cent in the past three decades. In whole wheat, carbohydrates have reduced by 9 per cent. Similarly, pulses are being depleted of their key nutrient—protein, which plays an important role in building, repairing and maintaining tissues. Protein has reduced by 10.4 per cent in masoor (whole brown lentil) and 6.12 per cent in moong (whole green gram). Please click here to access.

On the other hand, protein content has increased in food items like snake gourd (by 78 per cent) and rice (16.76 per cent). “Foods like rice are not consumed for their proteins. So this increase may not do much to meet body’s requirements,” says Veena Shatrugna, former deputy director of NIN.

Micronutrients, which are essential for growth and development, have increased in some foods, including masoor and moong and leafy vegetables like spinach. But their levels have significantly reduced in many other food items, particularly in fruits and vegetables. In potato, iron has increased but thiamine (vitamin B1), magnesium and zinc have reduced. The four micronutrients have reduced by an astounding 41-56 per cent in cabbage. In ripe tomatoes, thiamine, iron and zinc have reduced by 66-73 per cent. Iron has reduced by 76.6 per cent in green tomato and by 60 per cent in apples. Please click here to access.

Coarse grains, especially millets, are fast gaining popularity among the health- conscious as they come loaded with micro nutrients. DTE analysis shows that the levels of thiamine, iron and riboflavin have reduced in bajra, jau (barley), jowar (sorghum) and maize.

The overall trend suggests a decline in the nutrition value of foods, says Umesh Kapil, professor at the Human Nutrition Unit of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. However, he cautions against a simplistic comparison of the two reports. “Analytical methods used now are different from those used earlier,” says Kapil.

But in the 2017 report, NIN compares its 1989 data with the nutritional values of major food categories it had measured during the British regime in 1937, and says the nutritional content of many food ietms had declined during the half-century. The decline is not significant in most cases except carbohydrates in leafy vegetables and vitamin B1 in roots and tubers, it says.

An in-depth comparison of NIN’s 2017 nutritional data with that of 1937 will help understand how much nutrients are now left in our food basket, and how this change will affect the overall nutrition of a person.

Please click here to read more.

Down to Earth, 28 February, 2017, http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/food-basket-in-danger-57079


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