New Delhi: A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking directions to the central government to frame rules to ensure that "health warning" and "health star ratings" are printed on the food packages and also "health impact assessment" and "environment impact assessment" are done by the food-producing industries.
The PIL has been filed by BJP leader and Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay who contended that the nutrient threshold limit of packaged goods is not in consonance with the WHO recommendations and the government has not taken any steps to control it. Terming it a violation of the Right to Health guaranteed under Article 21, the petitioner said that a healthy diet is necessary to prevent malnutrition as well as non-communicable diseases like stroke, cancer, diabetes etc.
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"FSSAI neither conducts Health Impact Assessment nor introduced Health Star Rating System so citizens are forced to consume food high in energy, fats and sugars and less fibre rich fruits juices vegetables and grains," said the petitioner. The WHO recommends eating fibre-rich food, limit saturated fat, trans fat, limited sugar and salt (less than 5 gm) intake. As per the petition, 60% of deaths in India are caused due to lifestyle which involves problematic working hours and intake of junk food items, the PIL noted.
"If the Centre introduces a rule to display a warning on the packet of food items which have an excess of fat, sugar or salt in them, citizens might be able to stop the spread of various non-communicable diseases such as obesity and cholesterol which are caused due to consuming such food. Such measures have been implemented in many countries as well and the change was evident from the first year itself, resulting in a drop of 3-15% in the cases of such diseases," the PIL read.
The plea has also sought directions to FSSAI to examine the WHO recommendations on fat, salt and sugar intake, the guidelines on "health impact assessment", "health star ratings" and "health warning system" and prepare a comprehensive report within three months.
