Did Junk Food Drop Out Of School?

Maggi is coming back to town, yay! But it’s bringing a rather unpleasant message from the Food Safety & Standards Authority of India. The authority plans to impose a full stop on junk foods sold not just inside schools but around its premises as well. So you can forget about fighting over the last chip, your favorite flavor of candy, sodas and let’s not even get started on noodles, pizzas and burgers.

Go ahead. I’ll give you a minute to mourn.

Parental Guidance Advised 

The food safety watchdog has come up with a genius propaganda to ensure the availability of healthy and nutritious chows in school canteens to ensure that children don’t consume junk food. An excellent proposition for children’s health but how will the affected – students – react to this?

FSSAI believes that students – without parental supervision – are not a good judge of what they eat and also that schools are just not the place to promote the sale and consumption of foods high on unhealthy constituents.

Healthy, Wealthy & Wise

The regulator wants canteens to stock health and nourishing munches and said that, “canteens in the schools should not be treated as commercial outlets.”

In addition to purifying the on campus canteens, FSSAI wants schools to restrict the sale and availability of junk/HFSS food in areas within 50m of its property as well. The street food vendors in Delhi be like “yeah, it’s not like we were cooking anything anyway.”

The orders were given by the Delhi High Court to regulate the food available in schools in March 2015. The same was to be implemented within a span of 3 months across the country. So students, enjoy the canteen junk while it lasts – read, a good 3-4 months more.