With diabetes fast gaining an epidemic status in India, taking in its grip children too, experts have stressed on combined efforts — from warning labels that highlight that a particular food is unhealthy due to presence of high salt, sugar or fat to preventive measure to combat the chronic disease.
“The food authority needs to reform labelling provisions. Salt is yet not required to be mandatorily labelled on packaged foods.
“There are no provisions to inform consumer about how much a particular food or portion of it contributes to the recommended daily intake of salt, sugar or fat. Serving sizes are not standardised. These are best practices across the world”, said Amit Khurana, programme manager, food safety and toxins, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).
Stressful lifestyle, unhealthy eating habits and physical inactivity are to be mainly blamed for diabetes. According to International Diabetes Federation (IDF), one in 11 adults has diabetes.
little wonder, this year, the WHO is celebrating World Health Day 2016
under the theme ‘Beat diabetes on Thursday. Globally 350 million people are suffering from diabetes.
In India, situation is worse. There are about 77.2 million people in India suffering from pre-diabetes and over 65.1 million diabetes patients as per the ICMR. By 2030, India is estimated to be the diabetes capital of the world.
Dr Anoop Misra, Chairman, Fortis C-DOC Hospital of Diabetes and Allied Sciences is of the view that “Indians suffer from an early onset of dysmetabolic state due to excess body fat, fatty liver and genetic predisposition. Proper diet and moderate physical activity should be part of the lifestyle consistently from early years to prevent diabetes (See Box)”.
Concerned at the rising cases, the Drug Discovery Research Centre (DDRC), a Centre of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute of the Department of Biotechnology and Revelations Biotech, a Hyderabad
based firm on Thursday entered into a research collaboration to develop new approaches for diagnosis and treatment of diabetes.
Efforts are on way to explore helps from traditional Indian medical system too. While the AYUSH Ministry has asked the ICMR to look if yoga can help treat the disease, a combination of natural extracts, BGR-34 has been jointly developed by two CSIR laboratories in lucknow National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) and Central Institute for Medicinal and Aromatic Plant (CIMAP) for type-two diabetes. For the first time, it has been widely commercially manufactured and marketed by Delhi-based Aimil Pharamaceuticals.