In a move to limit the use of fat and sugar in cream biscuits, a consumer body has approached Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to draft a guideline for that.
The Consumer Education and Research Centre (CERC) said it tested 10 brands of cream biscuits at its in-house laboratory in Ahmedabad and a majority of those had “unacceptably high sugar and fat content“.
“FSSAI should set mandatory upper limits for fat and sugar in cream biscuits,“ Pritee Shah, CERC’s chief general manager, wrote in a recent letter to FSSAI chief executive Pawan Kumar Agarwal.
Cream biscuits do come in the category of HFSS (high fat, sugar and salt) foods. But, how unhealthy the brands available in the market are, was a revela tion,“ the letter said. The centre said it tested cream biscuit brands of ITCBSE 0.57 %, Britannia, Parle, Mondelez, Patanjali and Windsor.
While fat content in six of the 10 brands was more than 20g-100g, sugar content was over 25g-100g in all the tested products, CERC said. According to the National Institute of Nutrition, the recommended desirable visible fat intake per day is 20g for both men and women, while the recommended daily allowance for sugar as per the latest norms of the World Health Organization is 25g (6 teaspoons).
“This effectively means 100 gms of cream biscuits would alone stuff us with a day’s quote of fat and sugar,“ Shah said.
Cream biscuits are “indulgence products“ and shouldn’t be overconsumed, said Mayank Shah, category head at Parle Products.
But he said regulating the fat and sugar content by FSSAI could be difficult since different manufactures attempt to offer different products.
An ITC spokesperson said all its food products are tested at the company’s NABL-accredited Life Sciences & Technology Centre as well as at external laboratories which are FSA approved as well as NABL-accredited.
“In all these tests, our food products comply with regulatory standards and requirements,“ the spokesperson said.