The Big Story: Big plates

Should the government get restaurants to define portion sizes?

On Monday, Union Minister for Food and Consumer Affairs, Ram Vilas Paswan, told the Hindustan Times that his ministry will soon hold a meeting of representatives from the restaurant industry to consider a standard for food portions.

The move was inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments on his Mann Ki Baat radio show on April 9, when he complained about the amount of food being wasted across the country.

Paswan indicated that some restaurants might be serving more than what a customer could eat. “Why serve four idlis when a person can eat only two?” he asked. He told NDTV: “I noticed when I went to restaurants that food was being wasted. We cannot see this happening in a country where there are so many poor. I asked the industry and restaurants to come for meeting and discuss if there is any legal provision to fix portions.”

Advertisement

This isn’t a trivial problem. In a country where almost half the population lives below or just above the poverty line, the large-scale wastage of food is a moral dilemma. This was probably what led Modi to made his comments.

But is the retail food sector the ideal place to start?

While the government wants restaurants to define food portions and could possibly devised standardised labels for the entire country, the fact is that food wastage is much higher at the production and distribution levels than at the retail stage in restaurants.

Advertisement

Between 2013 and 2015, around 40,000 tonnes of foodgrains were wasted in Food Corporation of India godowns. India still lacks a robust network of cold storage, resulting in large quantities of perishables getting spoilt while they are being transported from farm to market.

In this context, the government’s idea to begin with the retail food sector looks like an attempt to shrug off its burden of fighting a serious structural issue and make the commercial sector responsible for it. To tackle the problem, it should consider the grain, not the chaff.

The Big Story

  • How much agriculture produce does India lose annually? Charlie Moloney explains. 
  • An Indian NGO’s unique way of tackling food wastage.

Punditry

  1. In the Indian Express, Surjith S Bhalla says turning a blind eye to cow vigilantism will not gain Prime Minister Narendra Modi anything. 
  2. Mary E John in The Hindu argues that the new University Grants Commission norms restricting the number of research scholars a professor guide will kill the very spirit of research. 
  3. Shrija Agarwal in the Mint explains what the acquisition of eBay India by Flipkart could mean to the e-commerce industry. 

Don’t miss

TA Ameerudeen reports on the desperate measures farmers in Kerala have adopted to find water.

“In the last week of March, however, a dense aromatic grass sprouted on small patches of the river bed in Kuttipuram in Malappuram district. It was vetiver grass, also known as khus in some parts of India. A major ingredient in Ayurvedic medicines, perfumes, soaps and shampoos, there is a large commercial market for it. Normally grown on the banks of the river, this year, farmers planted vetiver on the river bed itself, sinking borewells right there to find water to irrigate the crop.”