To Ban or not to Ban

Ishi Khosla is a former senior nutritionist at Escorts. She heads the Centre of Dietary Counselling and also runs a health food store. She feels that for complete well-being, one should integrate physical, mental and spiritual health. According to her: 8220;to be healthy should be the ultimate goal for all.8221;

The recent ban on the sale of colas and junk food from schools and colleges has evoked mixed feelings from public and media. While some have vehemently supported it, others argue that bans never succeed and they violate an individual8217;s right to choose what he / she likes to eat or drink and that drinking sweetened beverages and sodas are not damaging to health. Well, certainly a ban alone is not the solution and regulating beverages is not enough, and the guardians of our health have a lot more to do.

Sweetened beverages mostly are synthetic concoction of sugar, flavour, caffeine, acids and colour. The concerns regarding sugar in these drinks stems from the fact that a single serving of 330 ml. can provides something like 8 teaspoons of sugar; so much so that according to WHO estimates, just 1 extra serving of a sweetened beverage increases the risk of developing obesity for a child by 60. Most of the evidence relates to soda drinks but sweetened juices and fruit drinks also promote weight gain if had in large quantities. It is also interesting to note that an average American child is estimated to consume about 34 teaspoons of sugar per day perhaps comparable to any urban Indian public school child and that 44 of this is through sweetened drinks!

What is further noticeable is the fact that many sweetened drinks use high fructose corn syrup which is far more obesogenic obesity promoting than simple sugars. It promotes insulin resistance and abdominal obesity even more than sugar and increases the risk for dyslipidemia abnormal cholesterol levels, consequences that predispose to high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. According to the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation 1993, children with a huge consumption of soft drinks rich in free sugars are more likely to be overweight and several trials confirm soft drinks rich in sugars cause more weight gain compared to energy sugar free drinks.

The advocates of these drinks argue why only these and not other sweetened products. The reasons are free sugars in beverages have a different effect on satiety compared to solid foods. This perhaps is because of reduced gastric distension and faster transit time, the energy contained in fluids is less well detected by the body and therefore does not result in fullness, or reduction in food intake.

The acids in soft drinks and fruit juices mainly phosphoric acid, citric acid, mallic and fumaric acid to name a few further damage as they corrode tooth enamel. Tooth enamel is softened within 1 hour of exposure to cola according to studies. The non-cola sweetened drinks contain flavour additives and organic acids which may be more aggressive at eroding tooth enamel than soda drinks. Excess of empty sugar calories infact deplete the body of vitamins and minerals which are needed to metabolize them. Arguments regarding rehydrating effects of these drinks are true but certainly a costly way of rehydrating the body!

It is also true that the chief influences on a child8217;s food consumption pattern are parents and home, school teachers and peers, media. Out of these, among school children and adolescents, peers and media are the most powerful. Therefore, it is the school8217;s responsibility to ensure that what it makes available to its children are appropriate and healthful choices. In the backdrop of big budgets and big marketing drives targeted towards children, it seems even more necessary to protect children from avoidable ill health.

Certainly banning has never been a solution to any problem, but in this case the attempt is simply regulating and to be consistent in the message that kids need to be discouraged to take high calorie, high fat and high sugar foods. By providing them in school supervised canteens dilutes the message. Would any parent want to stock up the house with junk food and ask children to refrain from it? It seems all too familiar! We tend to put commercial gains above all others even the health of young ones!

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Regulation along with education directed to children, parents, public at large along with provision of healthier alternatives like unsweetened drinks, plain water, milk 038; lassi, fresh fruits, whole grains, nuts and minimally processed foods certainly seems to be a step in the right direction, as has been shown in some recent interventions in schools in UK and US.

It8217;s about time, we start taking these issues beyond just an 8220;individual choice8221; issue- as the individual responsibility approach has flopped miserably. If one is to learn from the West, it is the larger macro- environment, which ultimately seems to matter more than the individual choices. If we create an Obesogenic environment Obesity promoting- largely directed at the adolescent market, making healthy choices may be difficult.