The need for multisectoral food chain approaches to reduce trans fat consumption in India

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Archna Singh¹  Vidhu Gupta²  Suparna Ghosh-Jerath³  Karen Lock⁴  Shauna M Downs⁵ 

[1] Indian Institute for Public Health, Public Health Foundation of India and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, India;Indian Institute for Public Health, Public Health Foundation of India, Haryana, India;Indian Institute for Public Health, Public Health Foundation of India, Plot No.34, Sector - 44, Institutional Area, 122002, Gurgaon, Haryana, India;London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health, London, UK;Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia;

关键词: Trans fat;    Product reformulation;    Trans fat policy;    Multisectoral policy;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-015-1988-7

 received in 2015-01-29, accepted in 2015-06-29,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe World Health Organization (WHO) recommends virtually eliminating trans fat from the global food supply. Although several high-income countries have successfully reduced trans fat levels in foods, low- and middle-income countries such as India face additional challenges to its removal from the food supply. This study provides a systems analysis of the Indian food chain to assess intervention options for reducing trans fat intake in low-income consumers.MethodsData were collected at the manufacturer, retailer and consumer levels. Qualitative interviews were conducted with vanaspati manufacturers (n = 13) and local food vendors (n = 44). Laboratory analyses (n = 39) of street foods/snacks sold by the vendors were also conducted. Trans fat and snack intakes were also examined in low-income consumers in two rural villages (n = 260) and an urban slum (n = 261).ResultsManufacturers of vanaspati described reducing trans fat levels as feasible but identified challenges in using healthier oils. The fat content of sampled oils from street vendors contained high levels of saturated fat (24.7-69.3 % of total fat) and trans fat (0.1-29.9 % of total fat). Households were consuming snacks high in trans fat as part of daily diets (31 % village and 84.3 % of slum households) and 4 % of rural and 13 % of urban households exceeded WHO recommendations for trans fat intakes.ConclusionsA multisectoral food chain approach to reducing trans fat is needed in India and likely in other low- and middle-income countries worldwide. This will require investment in development of competitively priced bakery shortenings and economic incentives for manufacturing foods using healthier oils. Increased production of healthier oils will also be required alongside these investments, which will become increasingly important as more and more countries begin investing in palm oil production.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Downs et al. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.