The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India will soon be coming out with regulations to fortify processed foods including cereals, bakery products, buns, breads, biscuits, pasta, noodles, etc.
Inoshi Sharma, Director, FSSAI said that an overview of the food safety is need of the hour and FSSAI is soon coming up with regulations on how processed food can be fortified.
“As of now, five staples-salt, oil, milk, flour and rice are being fortified. The FSSAI in the process of passing a regulation for processed foods and the industry would be happy to know that very soon we would be coming up with regulations, whereby cereals, bakery products, buns, breads, biscuits, pasta, noodles, etc., commodities consumed by the people for which wheat or rice is used as a base for creating, can also be fortified. The need for research is very important and we need to figure out how we can adopt the process of fortification effectively,” Sharma said.
“The only condition we have put for processed food is that they should not be HFSS-high in fat, salt and sugar. If they do not fall in this category, all other processed food can be fortified,” Sharma added.
While emphasizing the need for fortification from a policy perspective, Sharma said that a proposal for mandatory fortification of oil and milk, encouraging processed food manufactures to undertake fortification, training of staff on food fortification, retail expansion for availability of fortified staples and checking and sampling of premix quality were some of the crucial key pointers and way forward.
“This is an opportunity for fortified staple foods such as rice or wheat flour to be included in the food-based safety net as part of COVID-19 response. Integrating fortified foods as part of safety nets in COVID-19 response can support resilience among most vulnerable of population,” she added.
Purnima Menon, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute, said, “In India, the context for fortification is both what happens in the foods that go in the private markets also, very substantially, what happens to foods & products that go in the public programs. There is a need to invest in understanding the implementation research and factors affecting its impact and outcome.”
Shariqua Yunus, Nutrition Specialist, World Food Programme, said, “Food fortification is an intervention that hasn’t been tried consistently or at scale apart from a few pilot efforts in the past few years.” Ms Yunus also added that a National Level policy now needs to be translated into state level actions and there is a need for an assured market for the private sector.
“There is an overarching need to have laboratories accredited to take micronutrient analysis of fortified food,” she said.