Speaker 1: Hyatt's Weskosova The Big Take is taking a break this week,
Speaker 1: so here's an episode you might have missed. Over the
Speaker 1: past decade, demand for fast food and snacks like potato,
Speaker 1: chips and chocolate has stalled in North America and much
Speaker 1: of Europe. Greater awareness of the health benefits of eating
Speaker 1: better and exercising are part of it, so is the
Speaker 1: recent surge in appetite suppressing drugs like ozempic that's left
Speaker 1: makers of fatty, sugary salty snacks in search of customers
Speaker 1: in other parts of the globe. One place they've found
Speaker 1: it is India. Sales of snacks and soft drinks have
Speaker 1: almost tripled there from a decade ago, topping thirty billion
Speaker 1: dollars last year. But Bloomberg's Pratique Parigia and Kai Schultz
Speaker 1: report that the popularity of high calorie, low nutrition food
Speaker 1: in India has also come with rising rates of obesity
Speaker 1: and diabetes, which are especially problematic for kids. I'm Wescasova
Speaker 1: today on The Big Take. How India came to crave
Speaker 1: fast food. Partikin Kai joined me from New Delhi and
Speaker 1: I asked Partique why snack food makers look to India
Speaker 1: as one of their next big markets.
Speaker 2: The food habits right, you know, I'm in Indian's love
Speaker 2: fried food, burgers and pizzas, so Indians are sort of
Speaker 2: experimenting with other westernized food and then the companies have
Speaker 2: got it figured out that you know, Indians love it,
Speaker 2: so that's why they targeted. And it's also in terms
Speaker 2: of pricing their competitively priced. There is a price advantage
Speaker 2: as well, and the companies have got it figured out,
Speaker 2: so that's why their targeted targeting Indians in cities as
Speaker 2: well as small towns.
Speaker 3: CANi.
Speaker 1: What are some of the foods that are being introduced
Speaker 1: to India that are new that you just didn't see
Speaker 1: a few years ago.
Speaker 4: Process food is still a relatively new phenomenon in India
Speaker 4: and part of the reason that it's quite popular here
Speaker 4: is because it is a novelty and there isn't as
Speaker 4: much public health awareness about the potential dangers of consuming
Speaker 4: copious amounts of it. So in grocery stores today, you'll see,
Speaker 4: in particular, lots of breakfast cereals, lots of different chocolates,
Speaker 4: lots of confectionery items in general, and these are very
Speaker 4: popular across demographics in India. Not just in the bigger cities,
Speaker 4: but also now in more rural parts of the country
Speaker 4: where companies like Coca Cola are experimenting with selling small
Speaker 4: sized portions of these items, keeping in mind the kind
Speaker 4: of price sensitivities that are at play in India as
Speaker 4: it developed.
Speaker 1: Kind of the story starts with a scene in a
Speaker 1: classroom in India where a nutritionist is trying to teach
Speaker 1: kids about healthy food options and she grows kind of frustrated.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us what happened?
Speaker 4: So this nutritionist has been doing these seminars with young
Speaker 4: students outside Delhi for several years now, and what she's
Speaker 4: found is that there's a real excitement for junk food
Speaker 4: within this demographic.
Speaker 5: Yes, as we look at unhealthy options, I really enjoy
Speaker 5: Maggie and like noodles and ramen. But if you look
Speaker 5: at healthy snacks at home, I really enjoy Indian snacks
Speaker 5: like sweeze, mattai, etc.
Speaker 4: And so many of her activities are designed to spread
Speaker 4: public health awareness about the pitfalls of having too much
Speaker 4: McDonald's or too many potato chips.
Speaker 6: Fruit and vegetables or vitamins and minerals very good. So
Speaker 6: now when you eat aluka parata. Does my fist close
Speaker 6: with the number of food groups coming into that alu
Speaker 6: cabs okay, and the fats so cabs, grains, wheat, flour, potato,
Speaker 6: Everything comes here in this finger and I've used fat
Speaker 6: in it, but my finger, Oh God, I can't make
Speaker 6: a fist. What should have been added? Maybe pulses I
Speaker 6: could have added, Missirotata.
Speaker 4: And what she says too, is that there's a sort
Speaker 4: of status issue at play here for any of these
Speaker 4: young students. Going to McDonald's for a birthday party is
Speaker 4: far more exciting than having a home cooked me out
Speaker 4: at home.
Speaker 7: I had gone to a birthday party of my friends
Speaker 7: and over there there were many foreign dishes or the
Speaker 7: dishes from the West, such as pizza, berger pasta, and
Speaker 7: these tasted way different from the dishes or the Indian
Speaker 7: culture of food. I told my after the word their
Speaker 7: party about such dishes and how they were one of
Speaker 7: my cravings.
Speaker 4: And so trying to sort of make healthy food attractive
Speaker 4: for youth is increasingly a challenge in India.
Speaker 8: For her, these products are designed, and more than designing,
Speaker 8: I think it's the marketing piece which creates the impact
Speaker 8: in the head of the user of the consumer. You know,
Speaker 8: it's a big buy in our groceries every month. Beat
Speaker 8: the cookies, beat the Maggie, or even for that matter,
Speaker 8: the milk powders which are full of sugar. These days,
Speaker 8: all of that looks so easy and so attractive to
Speaker 8: consume because of a strong marketing skill that these companies use.
Speaker 1: While there are nutritionists like the one we just heard
Speaker 1: who are working to educate kids, it is not easy
Speaker 1: to combat the massive appeal of snack foods, especially for kids.
Speaker 1: Critique says, many people in India aren't aware of the
Speaker 1: health risks of eating too much processed foods.
Speaker 2: That is, the lack of awareness about these food items
Speaker 2: like they might cause cardiovascular diseases, but then most Indians
Speaker 2: they don't bother.
Speaker 4: So beyond the public health awareness piece that Critique pointing out,
Speaker 4: many large food conglomerates are increasingly facing strict regulation and
Speaker 4: many of their core markets, particularly in the West. Because
Speaker 4: these food items are relatively new in India, they have
Speaker 4: fewer restrictions when it comes to marketing their products, whether
Speaker 4: that be on television or social media or in grocery stores.
Speaker 4: With the packaging and so this is really created an
Speaker 4: attractive environment for them to find a massive new market
Speaker 4: of people who have perhaps less familiarity with some of
Speaker 4: the challenges of eating junk food regularly and what those
Speaker 4: consequences could be over the longer term.
Speaker 2: The companies are targeting obviously India, the world's most popular
Speaker 2: country now. As Kai pointed out, they can't increase their
Speaker 2: sales elsewhere, so they're targeting India.
Speaker 4: And what we're seeing too, is that many of the
Speaker 4: restrictions that have been put in place in Western markets
Speaker 4: where junk food has traditionally been quite popular, are working
Speaker 4: to curb sales, whereas in India, when you look at
Speaker 4: the growing market for junk food and the change in
Speaker 4: retail volume, you see pretty dramatic increases across the board
Speaker 4: for everything from breakfast cereals to chocolate, to sweets and
Speaker 4: potato chips. So these regulations that are being put in
Speaker 4: place in countries like Mexico or Chile, or the United
Speaker 4: States or parts of Europe have been very effective at
Speaker 4: sort of changing the tide and public perception of how
Speaker 4: much junk food is a good idea.
Speaker 1: Pritique also right that you're starting to see these snack
Speaker 1: foods various junk foods appearing in Bollywood and in other
Speaker 1: kind of forms of just popular culture in India.
Speaker 2: When the show in a movie or in addisement, obviously
Speaker 2: they show the sales or any.
Speaker 3: Food item like burger or any fruit.
Speaker 5: Juice, shopping, ghana slice, How good.
Speaker 8: When you are just a bee swifte every day?
Speaker 7: Maggie noodles, Masala ab assorted mushroom broccoli, your baby Gone
Speaker 7: Maggie medal.
Speaker 2: To make it popular, they give these examples in Bollywood
Speaker 2: movies or elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Kai in India. You write that even in metropolitan areas,
Speaker 1: large supermarkets still aren't very common, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of these foods are sold in convenience stories. Is this
Speaker 1: the kind of main competition for just traditional home cooked food?
Speaker 4: So for a lot of India's history, open air vegetable
Speaker 4: markets have been the norm, right, so you go outside
Speaker 4: and you source your produce locally. Typically there are very
Speaker 4: few options for processed foods. In recent years, we've seen
Speaker 4: more convenience store chains open up in cities like Delhi,
Speaker 4: and they sell a mix of items, but typically they're
Speaker 4: stocked with processed food and they tend to do quite well.
Speaker 4: So while the larger supermarkets still aren't common. It's certainly
Speaker 4: true today that in the bigger cities at least, these
Speaker 4: convenience store chains are very much upending what used to
Speaker 4: be a very kind of traditional way of obtaining food
Speaker 4: in India, which is to go somewhere outside, to barter
Speaker 4: for the price of onions or potatoes or fruits, and
Speaker 4: to do a lot of you're cooking at home with
Speaker 4: whole ingredients.
Speaker 1: In partigue, what are some of the big brands that
Speaker 1: have moved into India and taken up more and more
Speaker 1: of people's diets.
Speaker 2: For breakfast, there's a protocoled Maggie, right, it's basically noodles
Speaker 2: deep fried refined flower produg The brand is owned by Nicely,
Speaker 2: so Maggi is very common even in small towns. And
Speaker 2: then Kellogg's, Kellogg's, Cereals, McDonald's obviously for Burgo, then Pizza
Speaker 2: Dominoes or Pizza Hut.
Speaker 4: So all these big brands, all the big brands are
Speaker 4: now in India, whether that's pringles made by Kelenova formerly Kellogg's,
Speaker 4: or cereals made by Nesle. You will find pretty much
Speaker 4: anything that you would find in many other parts of
Speaker 4: the world, particularly in the West. In India now they
Speaker 4: may be sold in more specialty shops, but something like
Speaker 4: a Coca Cola bottle is omnipresent and very accessible to
Speaker 4: most Indians from a price perspective. What we're finding too,
Speaker 4: is that a cereal box in India may look very
Speaker 4: different from a cereal box in another part of the world.
Speaker 4: So in India, for example, you can still use cartoon
Speaker 4: characters to sell a box of cereal. In parts of
Speaker 4: Latin America, that's increase the banned so you'll no longer
Speaker 4: be able to find as much messaging that's specifically targeting children.
Speaker 1: After the break. How this lack of regulation helps pave
Speaker 1: the way for fast food sales in the world's most
Speaker 1: populous nation. Earlier this year, India surpassed China to become
Speaker 1: the world's most populous country with more than one point
Speaker 1: four billion people. And with so many people in India
Speaker 1: now eating fast food, I asked Kai what food companies
Speaker 1: had to say about the potential health impacts of their products.
Speaker 4: TeleNova has cut sugar in its chocolate cereal by a fifth.
Speaker 4: Nesle notes that it voluntarily includes nutrition information on the
Speaker 4: front packaging of items sold in India. And Unilever has
Speaker 4: said that the company is committed to providing products that
Speaker 4: strike a balance between having enough nutrients but also being
Speaker 4: palatable for consumers. Many of these food companies will say
Speaker 4: that they are addressing a need in the Indian market.
Speaker 4: The history of India is one that has been dotted
Speaker 4: with famines with a challenge of under nutrition malnutrition. Now
Speaker 4: what we're seeing is that the options are plentiful, but
Speaker 4: diets are increasingly being replaced with ones that involve many
Speaker 4: empty calories. Many of these food companies will also argue
Speaker 4: that all of the nutritional information is on the packaging
Speaker 4: of their items, and the public health activists will come
Speaker 4: back and say, yes, they're there, but they're buried on
Speaker 4: the back. They're not featured prominently on the front of
Speaker 4: the labeling. And in many cases, the front of the
Speaker 4: labeling will play up perhaps that a product has high
Speaker 4: vitamin D or that it's high in protein, but will
Speaker 4: minimize or ignore or under sell that the sugar content
Speaker 4: is very high, or that a product has many carbohydrates
Speaker 4: in it. So there are various ways of obscuring that
Speaker 4: information that public health activists fuel. Is prevalent now in
Speaker 4: India and it's ultimately at the expense, they say, of consumers.
Speaker 4: As we've seen over the last decade or to the
Speaker 4: obesity rate in India has surged pretty dramatically, particularly among children,
Speaker 4: and that's of ever greater concern not just for activists,
Speaker 4: but also for parents, for schools, for public health officials,
Speaker 4: and for India more generally, as it attempts to balance
Speaker 4: its desire for more foreign business with of course, the
Speaker 4: necessity of protecting public health.
Speaker 1: This question of labeling is an important thing for a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are concerned about what people in
Speaker 1: India are eating. Labeling such a big deal.
Speaker 4: Regulation in general of food items is a very recent
Speaker 4: conversation in India, So until twenty eleven, there was no
Speaker 4: real regulatory body that looked at food and food safety
Speaker 4: and how to educate consumers about the choices they're making
Speaker 4: when they go into the grocery store, and so there's
Speaker 4: still fairly limited public awareness about the dangers of many
Speaker 4: of these products. It's also important to note that India
Speaker 4: only really opened up its economy in the nineties, so
Speaker 4: until relatively recently, there were few options available to many
Speaker 4: people in the country. These are very new entries and Therefore,
Speaker 4: many people don't quite recognize the potential dangers of over consumption.
Speaker 4: Public health activists are very aware that ultimately the consumer
Speaker 4: makes the choice about what they want to eat or
Speaker 4: not eat. I think where some of the tension lies
Speaker 4: is how these products are marketed to children, where the
Speaker 4: choice is far murkier, and where you really have to
Speaker 4: have much more of a support system around you to
Speaker 4: understand what exactly you're putting into your body.
Speaker 3: The labeling is a very stranger.
Speaker 2: The content is written a very tiny letters, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, you don't have the patience, and most of
Speaker 2: it is in English.
Speaker 3: A lot of people can't treat English.
Speaker 2: So if a particular packet has a particular quantity of sugar,
Speaker 2: people are not going to notice it because the letters
Speaker 2: are so tiny.
Speaker 1: When we come back, what is India's government doing to
Speaker 1: combat rising obesity rates? Given the health concerns associated with
Speaker 1: processed foods, especially in kids, ask Partique what India's government
Speaker 1: was doing about it.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago, there were meetings by the
Speaker 2: food regulator to talk about labeling, and the meeting was
Speaker 2: attended by the activist, company officials and the government officials.
Speaker 2: Officials from the food deg letter and they were trying
Speaker 2: to have a consensus on how labeling should be done
Speaker 2: in the food packets. So what we found out was
Speaker 2: the company officials they were sort of, you know, dominating
Speaker 2: the meeting. So that's why we haven't seen no big
Speaker 2: change in leveling in India.
Speaker 1: And a note here that India's Health Secretary and Chairperson
Speaker 1: of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India did
Speaker 1: not respond to multiple requests from Bloomberg for comment about
Speaker 1: this story. Kay, you mentioned that childhood obesity rates in
Speaker 1: India have risen quite a bit. What are the statistics
Speaker 1: around obesity rates in general in India.
Speaker 4: Since India liberalized three decades ago, how the adult obesity
Speaker 4: ray has surged. It's more than triple and among children
Speaker 4: the rises the steepest in the world, behind Vietnam and Namibia.
Speaker 1: Kai and Critique report that as late as the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: India's target was to eradicate extreme hunger. The government put
Speaker 1: the focus on calories, not nutrition. Some global health experts
Speaker 1: have even said that being overweight was a symbol of
Speaker 1: luxury among the affluent. I asked Kai about.
Speaker 4: This because these new food items, processed food items are
Speaker 4: affordable and no more expensive the more traditional options. What
Speaker 4: we're seeing is that obesity is no longer a disease
Speaker 4: of the elite. It's now something that's far more widespread
Speaker 4: across India, touching many different demographics and income levels.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the government will begin to step
Speaker 1: in to try to address some of these concerns about
Speaker 1: health and nutrition?
Speaker 2: The comment should do it because all these activists are
Speaker 2: after them. So yeah, I mean, sooner or later they
Speaker 2: may do something. I remember, you know, like a couple
Speaker 2: of years ago, we did a story saying they were
Speaker 2: doing the opposite. At a press conference, the Food Security
Speaker 2: once said that, you know, we want to boost consumption
Speaker 2: of sugar in the country because there is a selfless
Speaker 2: I hope. I think the sooner or later government will
Speaker 2: make regulations stronger to sort of reduce or control sale
Speaker 2: of junk food in India.
Speaker 4: Last year, the Indian government proposed using health Star ratings
Speaker 4: on the packaging of food, and though that system isn't
Speaker 4: yet in effect and could still change, and in fact
Speaker 4: has faced quite a bit of pushback from public health activists,
Speaker 4: the question is really an open one still about whether
Speaker 4: that kind of system will have an impact on curbing
Speaker 4: unhealthy purchases, and I think it's ultimately something that India
Speaker 4: and it's one point for billion people can no longer
Speaker 4: turn away from, particularly as OBC rates go up and
Speaker 4: as the country looks to be a real destination for
Speaker 4: various businesses.
Speaker 1: Kai Pretigue, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for listening to us here at The
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: Vicky Ergolina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Zeneb Sidiki and Federica Romaniela. Phil de
Speaker 1: Garcia is our engineer. Our original music was composed by
Speaker 1: Leo Sidrin. I'm West Kasova. We'll be back tomorrow with
Speaker 1: another Big Take.
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