The move was in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign to encourage active lifestyles, called Fit India. Earlier this year, Modi used his radio program to call on people to reduce the amount of oil they consume.
Nearly one in five adults in India’s urban areas are overweight or obese, the 2021 National Family Health Survey found. The percentage of children aged under five who are overweight is also increasing, it found.
Food vendors sell fried snacks at a market in Delhi, India.Credit: Shutterstock
India, a country of about 1.4 billion people, is expected to have 450 million overweight or obese people by 2050, second only to China, according to a study by The Lancet, a medical journal. The government has identified obesity, which can push up rates of cardiovascular problems, Type 2 diabetes and other diseases, as a major public health challenge.
Street foods such as jalebis, samosas and chole bhature – chickpea curry with deep-fried bread – are deep-fried in saturated or partially hydrogenated oils, and often refried in the same oil, which significantly increases trans fatty acid content, endocrinologist Anoop Misra said.
If government health programs are executed and regulated well, it could “lead to a significant reduction in obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease,” he said.
Street food lovers are not ignorant of the perils.
Samosas are the king of Indian street food.Credit: Matt O’Donohue
On a recent afternoon, Sanjay Kumar, 29, stood by Old Famous Jalebi Wala, a shop that has been in business since 1884, in Delhi’s bustling Chandni Chowk bazaar. He was eating a jalebi topped with rabri, a condensed milk dish.
Kumar said he was overweight but allowed himself the occasional treat. Although jalebis are available everywhere, the freshly made ones at the stall – which is about the length of a bus – are of “top quality”, he said.
“I know that jalebis increase the weight, but what do I do?” Kumar said. “Jalebis are so tasty.”
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Such snacks are necessary because lower-income workers cannot afford to buy food in expensive restaurants, Rishabh Nath, who runs a food stall founded by his father adjacent to Delhi’s high-end Khan Market, said. It opens at 5am daily and quickly becomes crowded with workers filling up for the day ahead.
Dheeraj Sharma, who works for a driving school, said he had been eating samosas from a stall four times a week for the past decade. He is aware of the dangers of too much fried food, but he said samosas were his snack of choice because they’re “tasty, easy to eat and cheap to buy”.
Sharma, 30, said it was a good idea for governments to urge shops to display more information about the foods they sell. But, he added, “this is the fun of life, so why not enjoy?”
