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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Stop compulsory food fortification: Health activists write to FSSAI

Stop compulsory food fortification: Health activists write to FSSAI

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published Published on Aug 2, 2021   modified Modified on Aug 3, 2021

-GaonConnection.com

The Indian government is considering ‘mandatory’ food fortification in the country. Several health experts have written to FSSAI calling the decision ‘a blanket approach’ to meet the complexity of malnutrition in the country. Details here.

At least 170 people and organisations, including medical experts and nutritionists, have today, on August 2, written a letter to Ashok Kumar Mishra, the assistant director of Food Fortification Resource Centre, department that regulates food under the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). The letter urges the department to scrap its decision to mandate synthetic fortification of foods such as rice with iron.

“Fortification with one or two chemicals to address one nutrient deficiency will be limited by another nutrient deficiency. For e.g. haemoglobin synthesis requires not just iron but good quality proteins and many other micronutrients as well … this proposal for mandatory fortification citing RDA [Recommended Dietary Allowances] for micronutrients while not taking into account the shortfall in macro nutrients of the population, is specious,” reads the letter dated August 2.

Debal Deb, ecologist and traditional rice conservator, mentioned in the letter: “It is ridiculous (sic) that the government is promoting polished rice, which has lost a lot of its nutrition on the one hand, and talks about chemical fortification on the other hand.”

In India, fortification has been made mandatory for some micronutrients. Last year, FSSAI considered it mandatory to fortify edible oil with vitamin A and D ‘so that people of India can enjoy better immunity with good health’.

The country is also considering ‘compulsory’ fortification of rice with Vitamin B12, Iron, and Folic Acid from 2024 to address malnutrition and anaemia crisis in the country.

The letter dated August 2 also highlighted that since April, the government has also started distributing fortified rice through the mid-day meal scheme and Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) programme citing widespread nutritional deficiencies. The central government has also initiated a three-year pilot scheme on rice fortification and supply via public distribution (PDS) in 15 districts across the country.

However, experts state that the chemical or synthetic food fortification is detrimental to health.

Fortification can lead to toxicity’

In the letter, the signatories including Right to Food Campaign, a non-profit working for food rights, and the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, an informal network working to strengthen food diversity and nutrition, pointed out that the mandatory fortification is detrimental to health and “it would bring socio-economic impacts such as market shifts in favor of large corporations, loss of livelihoods for small and informal players, monocultures in diets and reliance on packaged foods.”

Experts also pointed out that in undernourished populations such as India’s, the key problem is protein inadequacy as a result of monotonous cereal-based diets along with low consumption of vegetables and animal source foods such as meat, poultry, eggs, and fish. The fortification can lead to toxicity, including gut inflammation, they say.

“Evidence supporting fortification is inconclusive and certainly not adequate before major national policies are rolled out,” Veena Shatrugna, former Deputy Director of National Institute of Nutrition, was quoted as saying in the press statement.

Please click here to read more. 


GaonConnection.com, 2 August, 2021, https://en.gaonconnection.com/food-fortification-health-nutrition-fssai-malnutrition-anaemia-40126/


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