Historically, the correlation between poor dietary intake and adverse mental health has been documented, says the annual stocktaking of India’s economic health
The Economic Survey 2024-25 that was tabled in Parliament on Friday has flagged ultra processed foods (UPFs), the role of diet and lifestyle in India’s burgeoning mental health and non communicable disease burden. The survey which is presented one day before the Union Budget is an annual stocktaking of the country’s economic, fiscal and social health.
Drawing on a global survey done by the World Health Organisation that says that 12 billion days are lost to mental health related problems, the survey says that Rs 7000 per day is lost because of depression and anxiety. Among the factors that it acknowledges as contributors to mental wellbeing are workplace culture, hours spent working, and lifestyle, that influence mental well-being.
“The increase in mental health issues in children and adolescents is often linked to the overuse of the internet and, specifically, social media. Jonathan Haidt, in his book ‘The Anxious Generation: How the great rewiring of children is causing an epidemic of mental illness’, which has now been voted as the book of the year by Goodreads,138 provides a researched assessment of adolescent mental health. He suggests that the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” is rewiring the very experience of growing up. The recent announcements by government of Australia to ban the use of social media by children below 16 years of age is a testimony to the gravity of the situation. Similar interventions are being discussed in Sweden and Spain, as per news report,” reads the section of the survey that deals with the social sector.
Highlighting the ubiquity of ultra processed foods such as sweetened breakfast cereals, soft drinks, energy drinks to fried chicken and packaged cookies, the survey links them to anxiety outcomes, mental disorder outcomes, prevalent adverse sleep-related outcomes, heart disease-related mortality, type 2 diabetes, depressive outcomes, wheezing, obesity, and cancer and higher risks of mortality.
“The huge business of UPF segments has been built on hyper palatability of food items and marketing strategies involving misleading advertisements and celebrity endorsements targeting consumer behaviour. Often unhealthy packaged food items are advertised and marketed as healthy products. For example, breakfast cereals, tetra pack juices and chocolate malt drinks, often advertised as healthy and nutritious, come under the category of UPF based on their ingredients. Misleading nutrition claims and information on UPFs need to be tackled and should be brought under the scanner. Setting standards for permissible levels of salt and sugar and ensuring checks for UPF brands to adhere to the regulations are also required,” the survey says.
On NCDs, it draws on the 2017 study report ‘India: Health of the Nation’s States’ by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), to emphasise that the proportion of deaths due to NCDs in India increased from 37.9 per cent in 1990 to 61.8 per cent in 2016. The four major NCDs are cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), cancers, chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs), and diabetes. These diseases share four common behavioural risk factors: unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity, tobacco use, and alcohol consumption.
