It’s time to get industrial trans fats out of our kitchens

When India’s Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) capped industrially produced trans fatty acids (iTFA) at 2 per cent of total fat in January 2022, we did something remarkable. We became the first lower-middle-income country in the world to bring a World Health Organization gold-standard trans fat elimination policy into effect - a measure that could potentially protect more than 1.4 billion people from its harmful effects. Leading the way among South Asian countries and ahead of many nations with higher GDP per capita, our country drew the line.

That was the easy part.

More than four years later, the regulation exists at the national level, but operational enforcement remains uneven across the country, and in too many states, it is still not being meaningfully implemented. Trans fats — the chemically altered oils that clog arteries and kill silently — are still finding their way into our food. They may be present in samosas at roadside stalls, in the cream layers of biscuits, in the ladoos and jalebis sold at neighbourhood sweet shops, and in the puffs and patties at bakeries in our towns and cities. The law has been written, but it is not yet being lived. The gap is neither technical nor cultural — it is about enforcing the law where the problem actually begins.

This is the work that lies ahead.

Trans fats are not, as is sometimes assumed, part of our diverse culinary heritage. Vanaspati — the partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that became the workhorse of cheap commercial cooking in twentieth-century India - was a foreign invention introduced in the 1930s as an industrial substitute for ghee. It was sold to us as a modern, hygienic, and convenient product, but in reality it is equivalent to slow poison. Every gram of industrial trans fat consumed in India today is a gram of something our traditional kitchens never knew.  What our great-grandmothers’ kitchens did know was mustard oil pressed from seeds grown across the Gangetic plain; groundnut oil from the kolhus of Gujarat and Maharashtra; coconut oil from Kerala; sesame oil (til ka tel) pressed in the fields of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh; and ghee, made the slow way, from the milk of cows fed on real fodder. These are the fats India consumed for centuries. None of them contain the industrial trans fats estimated to have caused up to half a million premature deaths globally every year.

The death toll in India is staggering: an estimated 70,000 deaths annually due to trans fat consumption. Cardiovascular disease is now the leading killer in our country, striking Indians, on average, a full decade earlier than it strikes people in Western nations. India also bears one of the world’s heaviest diabetes burdens - and a growing body of evidence now links industrial trans fat consumption not only to heart attacks but also to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Every heart attack prevented, every case of diabetes averted, is a wage-earner saved, a family kept whole, and a hospital bed freed for someone else.

So, what must states now do? The answer is simpler than it first appears because the problem is concentrated. Industrially produced trans fats are made by a finite and known number of producers - the manufacturers of vanaspati, margarine, bakery and confectionery shortenings, and partially hydrogenated and inadequately reformulated fats that downstream bakers and halwais purchase. Solve the producer problem, and the downstream problem largely solves itself. First, identify the producers. Every state food safety department, working with FSSAI, can identify all manufacturers of vanaspati, bakery shortening, and hydrogenated fat operating within the state. This is not a search for needles in haystacks. These are, for the most part, licensed and registered industrial units. They can be listed, visited, sampled, and tested against the 2 per cent limit. Those not registered can readily be identified and brought into the system by tracing supply chains back from shops to suppliers and then to producers.

Second, inform the producers - and the regulators themselves. Implementation has been uneven partly because frontline officials responsible for enforcement have not always been adequately equipped to do so. State food safety officers need clear guidance on identifying and sampling regulated products, standardised laboratory protocols to measure TFA content, and the authority to act upon their findings. Many producers - especially smaller regional manufacturers - continue operating with outdated technology, formulations, and supply chains. State governments, working alongside the edible oil industry and technical institutes, can guide the transition towards compliant fat blends and, above all, towards the use of traditional Indian oils that are healthier and have formed the foundation of our cuisine for generations.

A producer who reformulates healthier alternatives using mustard, groundnut, sesame, and rice-bran oils or their blends is not merely complying with the law. He or she is creating a better product from crops cultivated by Indian farmers.

Third, take action against those unwilling to comply. Information and assistance are the carrot; the stick must also be real. Producers who, after being identified and offered a clear path forward, continue to market non-compliant trans-fat-laden products are introducing toxins into our food supply and should face licence suspension, product seizure and recall, and prosecution under the Food Safety and Standards Act. A handful of stringent and publicised actions will move the industry faster than a thousand inspections of small bakeries ever could. India set the standard for the world four years ago; it is now time to make India truly trans fat free. We know that we can, and when we do, we will not be importing some foreign idea of health. We will be returning to our own roots and moving towards an Ayushman Bharat.

The writer is President of i-LEAP at Pahlé India Foundation and a former Indian bureaucrat. He was also the first CEO of Ayushman Bharat; Views presented are personal.