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Speaker 1: Hyatt's Weskosova The Big Take is taking a break this week,

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Speaker 1: so here's an episode you might have missed. Over the

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Speaker 1: past decade, demand for fast food and snacks like potato,

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Speaker 1: chips and chocolate has stalled in North America and much

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Speaker 1: of Europe. Greater awareness of the health benefits of eating

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Speaker 1: better and exercising are part of it, so is the

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Speaker 1: recent surge in appetite suppressing drugs like ozempic that's left

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Speaker 1: makers of fatty, sugary salty snacks in search of customers

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Speaker 1: in other parts of the globe. One place they've found

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Speaker 1: it is India. Sales of snacks and soft drinks have

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Speaker 1: almost tripled there from a decade ago, topping thirty billion

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Speaker 1: dollars last year. But Bloomberg's Pratique Parigia and Kai Schultz

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Speaker 1: report that the popularity of high calorie, low nutrition food

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Speaker 1: in India has also come with rising rates of obesity

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Speaker 1: and diabetes, which are especially problematic for kids. I'm Wescasova

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Speaker 1: today on The Big Take. How India came to crave

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Speaker 1: fast food. Partikin Kai joined me from New Delhi and

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Speaker 1: I asked Partique why snack food makers look to India

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Speaker 1: as one of their next big markets.

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Speaker 2: The food habits right, you know, I'm in Indian's love

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Speaker 2: fried food, burgers and pizzas, so Indians are sort of

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Speaker 2: experimenting with other westernized food and then the companies have

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Speaker 2: got it figured out that you know, Indians love it,

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Speaker 2: so that's why they targeted. And it's also in terms

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Speaker 2: of pricing their competitively priced. There is a price advantage

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Speaker 2: as well, and the companies have got it figured out,

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Speaker 2: so that's why their targeted targeting Indians in cities as

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Speaker 2: well as small towns.

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Speaker 3: CANi.

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Speaker 1: What are some of the foods that are being introduced

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Speaker 1: to India that are new that you just didn't see

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Speaker 1: a few years ago.

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Speaker 4: Process food is still a relatively new phenomenon in India

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Speaker 4: and part of the reason that it's quite popular here

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Speaker 4: is because it is a novelty and there isn't as

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Speaker 4: much public health awareness about the potential dangers of consuming

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Speaker 4: copious amounts of it. So in grocery stores today, you'll see,

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Speaker 4: in particular, lots of breakfast cereals, lots of different chocolates,

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Speaker 4: lots of confectionery items in general, and these are very

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Speaker 4: popular across demographics in India. Not just in the bigger cities,

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Speaker 4: but also now in more rural parts of the country

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Speaker 4: where companies like Coca Cola are experimenting with selling small

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Speaker 4: sized portions of these items, keeping in mind the kind

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Speaker 4: of price sensitivities that are at play in India as

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Speaker 4: it developed.

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Speaker 1: Kind of the story starts with a scene in a

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Speaker 1: classroom in India where a nutritionist is trying to teach

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Speaker 1: kids about healthy food options and she grows kind of frustrated.

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Speaker 1: Can you tell us what happened?

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Speaker 4: So this nutritionist has been doing these seminars with young

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Speaker 4: students outside Delhi for several years now, and what she's

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Speaker 4: found is that there's a real excitement for junk food

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Speaker 4: within this demographic.

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Speaker 5: Yes, as we look at unhealthy options, I really enjoy

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Speaker 5: Maggie and like noodles and ramen. But if you look

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Speaker 5: at healthy snacks at home, I really enjoy Indian snacks

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Speaker 5: like sweeze, mattai, etc.

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Speaker 4: And so many of her activities are designed to spread

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Speaker 4: public health awareness about the pitfalls of having too much

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Speaker 4: McDonald's or too many potato chips.

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Speaker 6: Fruit and vegetables or vitamins and minerals very good. So

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Speaker 6: now when you eat aluka parata. Does my fist close

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Speaker 6: with the number of food groups coming into that alu

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Speaker 6: cabs okay, and the fats so cabs, grains, wheat, flour, potato,

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Speaker 6: Everything comes here in this finger and I've used fat

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Speaker 6: in it, but my finger, Oh God, I can't make

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Speaker 6: a fist. What should have been added? Maybe pulses I

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Speaker 6: could have added, Missirotata.

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Speaker 4: And what she says too, is that there's a sort

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Speaker 4: of status issue at play here for any of these

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Speaker 4: young students. Going to McDonald's for a birthday party is

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Speaker 4: far more exciting than having a home cooked me out

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Speaker 4: at home.

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Speaker 7: I had gone to a birthday party of my friends

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Speaker 7: and over there there were many foreign dishes or the

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Speaker 7: dishes from the West, such as pizza, berger pasta, and

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Speaker 7: these tasted way different from the dishes or the Indian

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Speaker 7: culture of food. I told my after the word their

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Speaker 7: party about such dishes and how they were one of

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Speaker 7: my cravings.

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Speaker 4: And so trying to sort of make healthy food attractive

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Speaker 4: for youth is increasingly a challenge in India.

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Speaker 8: For her, these products are designed, and more than designing,

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Speaker 8: I think it's the marketing piece which creates the impact

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Speaker 8: in the head of the user of the consumer. You know,

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Speaker 8: it's a big buy in our groceries every month. Beat

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Speaker 8: the cookies, beat the Maggie, or even for that matter,

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Speaker 8: the milk powders which are full of sugar. These days,

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Speaker 8: all of that looks so easy and so attractive to

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Speaker 8: consume because of a strong marketing skill that these companies use.

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Speaker 1: While there are nutritionists like the one we just heard

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Speaker 1: who are working to educate kids, it is not easy

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Speaker 1: to combat the massive appeal of snack foods, especially for kids.

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Speaker 1: Critique says, many people in India aren't aware of the

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Speaker 1: health risks of eating too much processed foods.

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Speaker 2: That is, the lack of awareness about these food items

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Speaker 2: like they might cause cardiovascular diseases, but then most Indians

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Speaker 2: they don't bother.

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Speaker 4: So beyond the public health awareness piece that Critique pointing out,

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Speaker 4: many large food conglomerates are increasingly facing strict regulation and

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Speaker 4: many of their core markets, particularly in the West. Because

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Speaker 4: these food items are relatively new in India, they have

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Speaker 4: fewer restrictions when it comes to marketing their products, whether

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Speaker 4: that be on television or social media or in grocery stores.

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Speaker 4: With the packaging and so this is really created an

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Speaker 4: attractive environment for them to find a massive new market

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Speaker 4: of people who have perhaps less familiarity with some of

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Speaker 4: the challenges of eating junk food regularly and what those

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Speaker 4: consequences could be over the longer term.

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Speaker 2: The companies are targeting obviously India, the world's most popular

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Speaker 2: country now. As Kai pointed out, they can't increase their

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Speaker 2: sales elsewhere, so they're targeting India.

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Speaker 4: And what we're seeing too, is that many of the

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Speaker 4: restrictions that have been put in place in Western markets

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Speaker 4: where junk food has traditionally been quite popular, are working

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Speaker 4: to curb sales, whereas in India, when you look at

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Speaker 4: the growing market for junk food and the change in

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Speaker 4: retail volume, you see pretty dramatic increases across the board

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Speaker 4: for everything from breakfast cereals to chocolate, to sweets and

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Speaker 4: potato chips. So these regulations that are being put in

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Speaker 4: place in countries like Mexico or Chile, or the United

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Speaker 4: States or parts of Europe have been very effective at

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Speaker 4: sort of changing the tide and public perception of how

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Speaker 4: much junk food is a good idea.

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Speaker 1: Pritique also right that you're starting to see these snack

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Speaker 1: foods various junk foods appearing in Bollywood and in other

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Speaker 1: kind of forms of just popular culture in India.

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Speaker 2: When the show in a movie or in addisement, obviously

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Speaker 2: they show the sales or any.

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Speaker 3: Food item like burger or any fruit.

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Speaker 5: Juice, shopping, ghana slice, How good.

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Speaker 8: When you are just a bee swifte every day?

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Speaker 7: Maggie noodles, Masala ab assorted mushroom broccoli, your baby Gone

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Speaker 7: Maggie medal.

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Speaker 2: To make it popular, they give these examples in Bollywood

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Speaker 2: movies or elsewhere.

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Speaker 1: Kai in India. You write that even in metropolitan areas,

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Speaker 1: large supermarkets still aren't very common, and so a lot

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Speaker 1: of these foods are sold in convenience stories. Is this

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Speaker 1: the kind of main competition for just traditional home cooked food?

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Speaker 4: So for a lot of India's history, open air vegetable

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Speaker 4: markets have been the norm, right, so you go outside

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Speaker 4: and you source your produce locally. Typically there are very

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Speaker 4: few options for processed foods. In recent years, we've seen

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Speaker 4: more convenience store chains open up in cities like Delhi,

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Speaker 4: and they sell a mix of items, but typically they're

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Speaker 4: stocked with processed food and they tend to do quite well.

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Speaker 4: So while the larger supermarkets still aren't common. It's certainly

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Speaker 4: true today that in the bigger cities at least, these

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Speaker 4: convenience store chains are very much upending what used to

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Speaker 4: be a very kind of traditional way of obtaining food

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Speaker 4: in India, which is to go somewhere outside, to barter

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Speaker 4: for the price of onions or potatoes or fruits, and

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Speaker 4: to do a lot of you're cooking at home with

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Speaker 4: whole ingredients.

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Speaker 1: In partigue, what are some of the big brands that

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Speaker 1: have moved into India and taken up more and more

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Speaker 1: of people's diets.

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Speaker 2: For breakfast, there's a protocoled Maggie, right, it's basically noodles

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Speaker 2: deep fried refined flower produg The brand is owned by Nicely,

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Speaker 2: so Maggi is very common even in small towns. And

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Speaker 2: then Kellogg's, Kellogg's, Cereals, McDonald's obviously for Burgo, then Pizza

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Speaker 2: Dominoes or Pizza Hut.

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Speaker 4: So all these big brands, all the big brands are

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Speaker 4: now in India, whether that's pringles made by Kelenova formerly Kellogg's,

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Speaker 4: or cereals made by Nesle. You will find pretty much

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Speaker 4: anything that you would find in many other parts of

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Speaker 4: the world, particularly in the West. In India now they

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Speaker 4: may be sold in more specialty shops, but something like

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Speaker 4: a Coca Cola bottle is omnipresent and very accessible to

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Speaker 4: most Indians from a price perspective. What we're finding too,

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Speaker 4: is that a cereal box in India may look very

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Speaker 4: different from a cereal box in another part of the world.

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Speaker 4: So in India, for example, you can still use cartoon

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Speaker 4: characters to sell a box of cereal. In parts of

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Speaker 4: Latin America, that's increase the banned so you'll no longer

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Speaker 4: be able to find as much messaging that's specifically targeting children.

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Speaker 1: After the break. How this lack of regulation helps pave

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Speaker 1: the way for fast food sales in the world's most

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Speaker 1: populous nation. Earlier this year, India surpassed China to become

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Speaker 1: the world's most populous country with more than one point

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Speaker 1: four billion people. And with so many people in India

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Speaker 1: now eating fast food, I asked Kai what food companies

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Speaker 1: had to say about the potential health impacts of their products.

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Speaker 4: TeleNova has cut sugar in its chocolate cereal by a fifth.

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Speaker 4: Nesle notes that it voluntarily includes nutrition information on the

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Speaker 4: front packaging of items sold in India. And Unilever has

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Speaker 4: said that the company is committed to providing products that

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Speaker 4: strike a balance between having enough nutrients but also being

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Speaker 4: palatable for consumers. Many of these food companies will say

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Speaker 4: that they are addressing a need in the Indian market.

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Speaker 4: The history of India is one that has been dotted

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Speaker 4: with famines with a challenge of under nutrition malnutrition. Now

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Speaker 4: what we're seeing is that the options are plentiful, but

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Speaker 4: diets are increasingly being replaced with ones that involve many

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Speaker 4: empty calories. Many of these food companies will also argue

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Speaker 4: that all of the nutritional information is on the packaging

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Speaker 4: of their items, and the public health activists will come

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Speaker 4: back and say, yes, they're there, but they're buried on

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Speaker 4: the back. They're not featured prominently on the front of

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Speaker 4: the labeling. And in many cases, the front of the

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Speaker 4: labeling will play up perhaps that a product has high

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Speaker 4: vitamin D or that it's high in protein, but will

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Speaker 4: minimize or ignore or under sell that the sugar content

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Speaker 4: is very high, or that a product has many carbohydrates

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Speaker 4: in it. So there are various ways of obscuring that

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Speaker 4: information that public health activists fuel. Is prevalent now in

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Speaker 4: India and it's ultimately at the expense, they say, of consumers.

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Speaker 4: As we've seen over the last decade or to the

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Speaker 4: obesity rate in India has surged pretty dramatically, particularly among children,

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Speaker 4: and that's of ever greater concern not just for activists,

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Speaker 4: but also for parents, for schools, for public health officials,

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Speaker 4: and for India more generally, as it attempts to balance

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Speaker 4: its desire for more foreign business with of course, the

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Speaker 4: necessity of protecting public health.

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Speaker 1: This question of labeling is an important thing for a

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Speaker 1: lot of people who are concerned about what people in

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Speaker 1: India are eating. Labeling such a big deal.

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Speaker 4: Regulation in general of food items is a very recent

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Speaker 4: conversation in India, So until twenty eleven, there was no

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Speaker 4: real regulatory body that looked at food and food safety

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Speaker 4: and how to educate consumers about the choices they're making

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Speaker 4: when they go into the grocery store, and so there's

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Speaker 4: still fairly limited public awareness about the dangers of many

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Speaker 4: of these products. It's also important to note that India

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Speaker 4: only really opened up its economy in the nineties, so

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Speaker 4: until relatively recently, there were few options available to many

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Speaker 4: people in the country. These are very new entries and Therefore,

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Speaker 4: many people don't quite recognize the potential dangers of over consumption.

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Speaker 4: Public health activists are very aware that ultimately the consumer

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Speaker 4: makes the choice about what they want to eat or

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Speaker 4: not eat. I think where some of the tension lies

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Speaker 4: is how these products are marketed to children, where the

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Speaker 4: choice is far murkier, and where you really have to

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Speaker 4: have much more of a support system around you to

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Speaker 4: understand what exactly you're putting into your body.

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Speaker 3: The labeling is a very stranger.

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Speaker 2: The content is written a very tiny letters, you know,

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Speaker 2: I mean, you don't have the patience, and most of

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Speaker 2: it is in English.

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Speaker 3: A lot of people can't treat English.

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Speaker 2: So if a particular packet has a particular quantity of sugar,

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Speaker 2: people are not going to notice it because the letters

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Speaker 2: are so tiny.

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Speaker 1: When we come back, what is India's government doing to

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Speaker 1: combat rising obesity rates? Given the health concerns associated with

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Speaker 1: processed foods, especially in kids, ask Partique what India's government

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Speaker 1: was doing about it.

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Speaker 2: A couple of years ago, there were meetings by the

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Speaker 2: food regulator to talk about labeling, and the meeting was

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Speaker 2: attended by the activist, company officials and the government officials.

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Speaker 2: Officials from the food deg letter and they were trying

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Speaker 2: to have a consensus on how labeling should be done

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Speaker 2: in the food packets. So what we found out was

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Speaker 2: the company officials they were sort of, you know, dominating

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Speaker 2: the meeting. So that's why we haven't seen no big

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Speaker 2: change in leveling in India.

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Speaker 1: And a note here that India's Health Secretary and Chairperson

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Speaker 1: of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India did

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Speaker 1: not respond to multiple requests from Bloomberg for comment about

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Speaker 1: this story. Kay, you mentioned that childhood obesity rates in

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Speaker 1: India have risen quite a bit. What are the statistics

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Speaker 1: around obesity rates in general in India.

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Speaker 4: Since India liberalized three decades ago, how the adult obesity

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Speaker 4: ray has surged. It's more than triple and among children

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Speaker 4: the rises the steepest in the world, behind Vietnam and Namibia.

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Speaker 1: Kai and Critique report that as late as the nineteen nineties,

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Speaker 1: India's target was to eradicate extreme hunger. The government put

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Speaker 1: the focus on calories, not nutrition. Some global health experts

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Speaker 1: have even said that being overweight was a symbol of

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Speaker 1: luxury among the affluent. I asked Kai about.

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Speaker 4: This because these new food items, processed food items are

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Speaker 4: affordable and no more expensive the more traditional options. What

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Speaker 4: we're seeing is that obesity is no longer a disease

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Speaker 4: of the elite. It's now something that's far more widespread

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Speaker 4: across India, touching many different demographics and income levels.

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Speaker 1: Do you think that the government will begin to step

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Speaker 1: in to try to address some of these concerns about

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Speaker 1: health and nutrition?

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Speaker 2: The comment should do it because all these activists are

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Speaker 2: after them. So yeah, I mean, sooner or later they

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Speaker 2: may do something. I remember, you know, like a couple

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Speaker 2: of years ago, we did a story saying they were

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Speaker 2: doing the opposite. At a press conference, the Food Security

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Speaker 2: once said that, you know, we want to boost consumption

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Speaker 2: of sugar in the country because there is a selfless

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Speaker 2: I hope. I think the sooner or later government will

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Speaker 2: make regulations stronger to sort of reduce or control sale

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Speaker 2: of junk food in India.

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Speaker 4: Last year, the Indian government proposed using health Star ratings

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Speaker 4: on the packaging of food, and though that system isn't

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Speaker 4: yet in effect and could still change, and in fact

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Speaker 4: has faced quite a bit of pushback from public health activists,

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Speaker 4: the question is really an open one still about whether

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Speaker 4: that kind of system will have an impact on curbing

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Speaker 4: unhealthy purchases, and I think it's ultimately something that India

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Speaker 4: and it's one point for billion people can no longer

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Speaker 4: turn away from, particularly as OBC rates go up and

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Speaker 4: as the country looks to be a real destination for

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Speaker 4: various businesses.

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Speaker 1: Kai Pretigue, thanks so much for coming on the show.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for listening to us here at The

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Speaker 1: Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is

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Speaker 1: Vicky Ergolina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. This episode

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Speaker 1: was produced by Zeneb Sidiki and Federica Romaniela. Phil de

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Speaker 1: Garcia is our engineer. Our original music was composed by

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Speaker 1: Leo Sidrin. I'm West Kasova. We'll be back tomorrow with

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Speaker 1: another Big Take.

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Speaker 3: Don't be in the

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Speaker 4: Pup Ba Pup Pup pup bum Bumper