Nutri fail
The nutritive value of commonly grown foods is falling
IF YOU thought that your healthy food choices are going to keep you fit and disease-free, think again. The data released by the National Institute of Nutrition (nin), Hyderabad, on January 18 suggests that the foods we eat today are less nutritious than what we used to consume just three decades ago.
nin has released such data after a gap of 28 years. In the report, Indian Food Composition Tables 2017, nin researchers have measured the values of 151 nutrients in 528 food items collected from markets across six geographical regions. Down To Earth (dte) compared the values with nin’s previous estimation done in 1989. All the food items and nutrients listed in the 2017 report do not find a mention in the 1989 report. But dte’s snapshot analysis shows an alarming trend: there is a perceptible decrease in nutrition levels in all types of food (see ‘Healthy no more’, p20).
Consider bajra (pearl millet), which is consumed across rural India and is often referred to as the poor man’s staple food. It is consumed mainly for carbohydrate, which provides energy. dte analysis shows that carbohydrate levels in bajra have reduced by 8.5 per cent in the past three decades. In whole wheat, carbohydrates have reduced by 9 per cent. Similarly, pulses are being depleted of their key nutrient—protein,