Food firms globally whip up wacky ways to battle bad diets
30 April 2019 5:30 AM GMT
SATARA, India/SINGAPORE, April 30 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - I ndian health worker Chhaya Sunil Jadhav banned snack food at home after her daughter, 11, fell sick from eating cheap, salty chips after school every day. An ultrasound scan revealed "a giant ball of glue" in the girl'
- Now, U.S. food giant Mars Inc and Mumbai-based charitable foundation Tata Trusts are marketing an alternative in western India: bite-sized squares made from yellow peas, which they say are packed with iron, protein, vitamins and micro-nutrients.
- For poor diet has overtaken smoking as the world's biggest killer, according to the latest Global Burden of Disease study, causing 20 percent of deaths globally in 2017.
- Launched in November, the pea-based snack is the first joint product from Mars and Tata Trusts - which owns two-thirds of India's salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Sons - after they agreed in 2016 to boost nutrition and food safety in Asia's third-largest economy.
- Globally, diabetes affects 422 million people, killing about 1.6 million in 2016, according to the World Health Organization.
- Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, land and property rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, gender equality, climate change and resilience.
Next Story
