The Food Safety and Drug Administration (FDA) of Karnataka is having another tilt at the junk food monster by prohibiting the sale, distribution, advertisement and promotion of foods high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) within school campuses and a 50 m perimeter around them. This would be welcome news to parents — those of them who are not junk food aficionados themselves — and an example for other states to follow. But, for the intervention to really work, the administration has to overcome considerable implementation difficulties and support it with proper food labelling, vigilance and awareness campaigns. If implemented desultorily, this too will go the way of the ban on liquor vends near schools, which by all accounts has had poor results.
This is not the first time that food authorities have tried to restrict schoolchildren’s access to unhealthy foods. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has standing regulations that bar the sale of HFSS foods in school canteens and hostel kitchens and within a 50 m radius around a school. There are also restrictions on advertising such foods.
Although it is binding upon schools to ensure that canteen contractors abide by these restrictions, most managements look the other way when sugary beverages and foods rich in processed carbs or fried in reheated oil are served to children. Even if they are compliant enough within campus, they fail to raise a red flag when vends offering branded and unbranded foods spring up around the school. Thus, it defeats the purpose if schools are scrubbed clean of junk food but the hinterland around them becomes a veritable HFSS ecosystem.
There are several reasons why school food regulations are hard to enforce and therefore tend to fail in due course. Chief among the shortcomings is the fragmented implementation system. School authorities, departments of education, public health and food safety, the local municipality and urban planning authorities all have a role in the mandate but work separately. Thus, food vends are allowed to come up in school zones without heed to children’s health concerns.
The proliferation of unorganised food vends around schools and inadequate food labelling by even the organised food sector are two other hurdles to implementing health interventions in school zones. Since nutritional assessment cannot be made visually, how is one to tell whether a bowl of noodles served by a food cart falls within the recommended daily allowance for carbs, sugar and fats? Will there be separate certification for food sold within school zones? If so, how will it be administered?
HFSS bans within schools alone will not lead to good outcomes for children’s health. Schools are not the only place where they have access to unhealthy food. They are far more likely to consume it at home or entertainment venues than in the school canteen. So, a 360-degree approach to curbing junk food consumption by children is called for, including awareness communication aimed at parents, appropriate and truthful labelling of ingredients in foods targeted at children, and controlling the sale of HFSS-heavy food at sale points commonly accessed by children. Also, it’s high time we ended all laissez-faire marketing of any food to children, including those cute commercials hawking soda with 30 gm of sugar in it.