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Quality Control in Food Industry and its Impact on Nutrition
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Wednesday, 11 December, 2019, 15 : 00 PM [IST]
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Sonal Dhemla
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Foods are materials, whether naturally occurring or cooked or processed form, and are consumed by human beings for their nourishment, satisfaction and enjoyment. With increasing urbanisation, consumption of packaged food, fast food and eating outside has increased among the people of the nation and is a trend that is agitatedly on with the present generation. Thus, in present scenario food quality has become an important food manufacturing requirement.
Besides ingredient quality, nutritional and sanitation prospect should be considered on priority. Because food consumers are susceptible to any form of contamination that may occur during the manufacturing process. A consumer should get the end-product with specification of all ingredients and nutrients, making the consumer inspired by the reliability of the product, i.e., the consumer is sure that he will acquire a safe product, without health risks, and with the properties claimed on the label.
Double burden of malnutrition
Presently, India is facing the serious and escalating double burden of malnutrition, with a large undernourished population as well as growing numbers of overweight and obese people who are developing chronic diseases.
Food and beverage manufacturers in India have the potential, and the responsibility, to be part of the solution to this double burden of malnutrition. The spread of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and cancer has forced us to reconsider our viewpoint on food security.
Some food stuffs like pastries, burgers, sweets, pizzas and carbonated soft drinks are not as harmful as alcoholic drinks, cigarettes or drugs but the former are poor in nutritive value with rich fat, sugar and salts content and act like slow poison causing obesity and other diseases. These customer segments are the company's treasures who later become heavy users in due course accounting for their huge margins.
No for elimination of harmful additives
There is a strong food industry lobby that does not want elimination of harmful additives to happen. That is because added salt, sugar and saturated fats are poor/cheap quality products and a great way for the industry to make money. Here the role of the food industry and value chain can be identified to comply with all applicable legislative and regulatory provisions aimed at maintaining nutritional value of foods during production for maintaining food safety and nation’s health and consumer acceptance as well.
Addition of flavour enhancers, preservatives, colours and artificial sweeteners is done into packaged foods to prolong their shelf life, enhance the taste or make them more presentable. While a majority of these additives have been deemed safe for consumption by food authorities, but in prescribed amounts, some of them have come under fire due to their long-term health impact.
Maximum limit for permitted additives
In accordance with the global food standards of Codex Alimentarius Commission and WHO, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has made several regulations for the use of these additives. FSSAI, under the Health Ministry, has fixed the maximum limit for use of permitted additives in various food groups to ensure the acceptable daily intake is not exceeded.
Food dyes and flavour enhancers are one of the most widely used and dangerous additives. Most of them are petroleum-derived and may contribute to behavioural problems in children like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Some have even been implicated as possible carcinogenics.
In a country like India it is very difficult to motivate the local food manufacturing industry to reformulate the products due to limited resources and logistics. It becomes more difficult with the small local and street vendors with poor or no education and awareness level.
Government in collaboration with the food industry has a powerful role to promote nutrition recommendations to the consumer to at least provide the consumers with informed choices rather than blind choices. Though it has already been made mandatory for manufacturers to specify the use of these additives on their packages, but specification claimed on packaging should be reliable.
Quality control from nutrition prospect
Second concern of quality control from nutrition prospect is nutrients losses while processing of food. “The economic cost of malnutrition is too high for us to ignore the leakage of nutrients by food loss and waste in our food systems” - Akinwumi Adesina, global panel member, and president of the African Development Bank.
Nearly every food preparation process reduces the amount of nutrients in food. In particular, processes that expose foods to high levels of heat, light, and/or oxygen cause the greatest nutrient loss. Nutrients can also be "washed out" of foods by fluids that are introduced during a cooking process. For example, boiling a potato can cause much of the potato's B and C vitamins to migrate to the boiling water. One will still benefit from those nutrients if one consumes the liquid (i.e. if the potato and water are being turned into potato soup), but not if one throws away the liquid.
Similar losses occur when one broils, roasts, or fries in oil, and then drains off the drippings. Some vitamins are more stable (less affected by processing) than others. Water-soluble vitamins (B complex and C) are more unstable than fat-soluble vitamins (K, A, D and E) during food processing and storage.
Health-associated challenges
The food industry has proceeded to tackle nutrition and health-associated challenges by incorporating healthy or health-promoting ingredients and bioactive compounds into the products and this ultimately increases the cost of the end-product. Poor people cannot afford this increased cost. Hence, efforts should be towards retaining the natural nutrients of the food ingredients. Policymakers need to develop a plan that focusses on perishable, nutritious foods and all parts of the food system, including consumer behaviour.
Nowadays, we need not only safe food, but food that can help the consumer maintain a good state of health. Consumers are very careful about food quality, not only in terms of hygiene standards, but also from the nutritional point of view. Nutrition-rich food, its availability and food safety are the areas growing worldwide concern on account of their direct bearing on human health.
The global food demand depends on processed food products because processing is expected to affect content, activity and bioavailability of nutrients. Processed foods have shown the capability of food processing in changing the nutritive status of the food. However, the health promoting capacity of food products strictly depends on their processing history. It is also an important point to think about the number of outbreaks of the over nutrition and obesity that is being observed in recent years due to over consumption of processed foods. For these facts the innovative technologies and advancements are needed to overcome the above consequences of the food processing.
Combinations of traditional and modern methods
The combinations of traditional and modern food processing methods and research advancements in techniques can provide a major way to enhance food quality. Good nutrition is one of the keys to good health. One can improve nutrition by regularly eating foods that have a lot of vitamins and minerals in them.
In summation, reducing loss and waste in nutritious foods would yield substantial benefits far beyond addressing hunger and malnutrition – to encompass economies and the natural environment. Secondly the continuous exposure of toxic chemicals present in food contributes to a plethora of diseases and other toxic effects in human beings. Food additives have been implicated as a contributing factor to dementia, bone disease, microcytic anaemia and much more.
Preservatives are added to many processed foods including breads and cereals. Studies have found additives as a source of nausea, weakness, headaches and difficulty in breathing. The toxicants in our food cannot be avoided entirely, but can be reduced by including choice of organic, less-toxic and sustainable options and demand of local and farm food.
(The author is consultant dietitian, Babylon Hospital and Babylon’s Newton CDSC, Jaipur, Rajasthan. She can be reached at sonaldhemla@gmail.com, nutrittudedietclinic@gmail.com)
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