Safe, nutritious and hygienic food is the foundation of the efforts of “Swasth Bharat”. Although, Food and Hygiene are very close subject for all of us in our daily life, our present lifestyle has been associated with poor nutritional food choices and practices which cause a cut in average life span and also increase in the chronic diseases like Heart attack, Diabetes, Obesity, Hypertension etc.
As we all know, eating proper and healthy food helps to avoid or fight with different chronic diseases. Due to sudden changes in our lifestyle, it’s very important to understand about Safe and Nutritious Food. Improper food is one of the most important reasons for our body to function in an unusual manner. As per the National Health Profile 2019, the average life expectancy of Indians is 68.7 years and not more than 20 % population of our country eat properly as compared with Japan where their average life span is 84.55 years. (Source: Data Source: United Nations - World Population Prospects); this fact allows us to think about this issue.
Challenges – Safe food
Today, the food chain has become longer, more complex and globalized. As a concern, food contamination is still very common. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) estimates that each year 48 million people get sick from a foodborne illness, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die. These figures represent only the tip of the iceberg, as the estimated number of unreported cases is very high. Furthermore, the statistics refer to gastrointestinal illness only and do not include disease caused by chemical adulteration in the food chain. To control all, we require timely policies and strategies to focus on hygienic practices as well as food nutrition.
People have the right to expect the food, they usually eat, to be safe and fit for human consumption. Foodborne illness and foodborne injury can be fatal when not considered seriously but also can have consequences leading to health problems. Attention to good hygienic approach in deciding whether a requirement is necessary or appropriate, an assessment of the risk should be made, preferably within the framework of the HACCP approach (Identify Hazard and Control measure).
Food Adulteration –
Adulteration is the addition of any extraneous matter to food in its supply chain of procurement, processing, and preparation which makes the food substandard as well as unsafe.
Food which is adulterated might be dangerous as it may be toxic and without some essential nutrients which can be added intentional to increase the margin of profit and crave for higher amount of consumption. Incidental Intentional adulteration is because of negligence, ignorance or lack of proper facilities.
Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) published a book of compilation of some common tests for Detecting Adulterants with Rapid Testing (DART) and cover common adulterants such as artificial and toxic colours, extraneous matter added with food. The book contains the following aspects-
- Reason to eat healthy – Importance of healthy eating
- Eating Healthy – Save Money Healthy Wealthy Retirement
- Protects your bones – increase bone strength
- Increase Immune system
- Help in your DNA - Better Genes
- Make Children's Health – Build their IQ and make them smarter
- All positive effects of Exercise
- Delivers Healthy skin
- Good Sleep
- Healthy Muscles
- Energy
- Win in life
We at TUV India are doing our part by giving awareness trainings on this topic to ensure that Healthy and Nutritious food habits along with basic hygiene practices are followed by everyone. We also arrange awareness training session especially for employees of our customers, their family members to help in making our country healthy. Some of our services also include practical demo to identify Food Adulteration by easy household methods that help to understand, as well as this initiative also stand with the Vision of FSSAI, to support food safety through engagements/partnerships with various national and international regulatory bodies, multilateral agencies etc., as one of the trusted leaders in the field of food safety.
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