The Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPI) in its new report “50 Shades of Food Advertising” has sought to expose how seductive, luring, manipulative or deceptive these advertisements can be. Consequences of such advertising are increased intake of unhealthy food products that is associated with obesity and diabetes, it says.
India is facing a dubious distinction of persistent under nutrition among children under five, and a rising trend of obesity and diabetes among grown-ups. Not something India can be proud of when it is aspiring to be a 5 trillion economy and world leader in almost every field. These conditions can only make a population of less productive adults who will perform below par.
The 2023 ICMR-INDIAB study shows there are 100 million cases of diabetes and 1 in every 4 individuals is either suffering from diabetes or is pre-diabetic or obese. The more recent ICMR-NIN’s “Dietary Guidelines for Indians” reveal that more than 10% of 5–19- year-olds are pre-diabetic. The Government of India had set a target to halt the rise of obesity and diabetes by 2025, under the National Multi-Sector Action Plan to Prevent and Control NCDs (2017-2022), which seems nowhere in sight.
One of the major underlying factors for rise in obesity and diabetes is increasing consumption of unhealthy diets triggered pervasive and aggressive advertising and marketing of unhealthy high fat, high sugar, high salt (HFSS) food products, or ultra processed food (UPF) products. These are making entry into the diets of Indians, replacing their traditional diets.
These products are usually high in sugars, salt or fats, which are better described as “Nutrients of Concern”. According to a study conducted by the WHO India Office, the retail sale of ultra processed food products in India is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 13.3% between 2011 and 202.
According to Kantar's FMCG Pulse report, 50% of Indian households consumed bottled soft drinks in the 12 months ending March 2024, which is a 19% increase from previous years. One of the WHO-India’s unpublished report showed that about 200,000 advertisements of HFSS are blasted every month onselect TV, print or digital mediums.
This report, “50 Shades of Food Advertising” provides clear-cut evidence of how food and drink products are being advertised by using different appeals such as evoking emotional feelings, manipulatinguse of experts, appropriating benefits real fruits, using celebrities to add value to the brand, projecting as healthy etc. while all of these 50 food products would fall under the category of unhealthy/HFSS or UPFs.
The report also provides information on the gaps in the existing legislations, such as FSS Act 2006, the Cable TV Networks Regulation Act, 1994 and Rules, the Consumer Protection Act of 2019 and the Norms of Journalistic Conduct 2022. The report highlights how to bridge these gaps.
NAPI has submitted a set of amendments to the ministries of the Press Council of India, Ministry of information and broadcasting as well as the Ministry of consumer affairs.
The report finds that these advertisements mislead on many counts. Most food advertisements conceal “important information” about nutrients of concern mandated by the Consumer Protection Act 2019. The Advertisement Code of the Cable TV regulation Act 1994 provides that “No advertisement which endangers the safety of children or creates in them any interest in unhealthy practices …shall not be carried in the cable service”. All food product advertisements can lead to unhealthy practices.
NAPi therefore recommends to stop any food advertisements if the food product is HFSS and UPFand makes further recommendations for Amendment to the above regulations to include, in an explicit manner the definition of HFSS and prohibit advertisements which carry food items beyond the thresholds of this definition.
According to Dr Arun Gupta, who is a pediatrician and convenor of NAPI:
“This is the least the Government of India can do and it is part of its plan to begin a halt to the rising consumption of unhealthy diets and thus on obesity and diabetes. Meanwhile, as amendments may take some time, Government of India can implement that each advertisement must disclose in bold letters the amount of nutrient of concern per 100gram/ml. It would be in the best interest of the people’s health that a public health ‘Bill’ is proposed in the Parliament to halt obesity. If we fail to halt the rising trend, it will only result in increasing the disease and economic burden, year by year on the individual family and the health system as a whole.”
Says Dr Nupur Bidla a member of NAPi and a social scientist:
“Under the Right to Information, we have found that FSSAI takes 1-2 years to refer the matter of misleading advertisements to a committee, which keeps on clarifying from companies. But out of more than 100 cases none has been fined as per rules even as the FSSAI committee found these to be misleading. This is gross injustice to the consumers, people of India. Such a delay allows companies to enjoy the ‘freedom’ to advertise and make money while public health may suffer. This is the reason the report also provides an objective method of identifying what is misleading food advertisement so that a quick decision can be made”.
She adds, “NAPI also recommends this to be adapted and used by authorities to make quick decisions on what is misleading and take action immediately”.
In 2022, the World Health Organisation published report on Food Marketing, The 2022 report, which observed “It confirms that marketing of foods that contribute to unhealthy diets remains pervasive and persuasive and provides evidence that strengthens the rationale for action to restrict food marketing to which children are exposed”.
Later, WHO in 2023 recommended strong policies to protect children from harmful marketing. Dr. Vandana Prasad, a community pediatrician and member of NAPi says:
“The Southeast Asia regional office of the WHO provided Nutrient profile model and a set of thresholdsof sugar, sodium and fats in 18 categories of food products beyond which it recommended prohibition of marketing. Now that ICMR-NIN guideline has provided thresholds for sugar, high fat and sodium, in both solids and liquids, these should be used for regulations and creating official definition of HFSS”.
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