Where Packaged Food is Unhealthiest

A research paper published last month in scientific journal Obesity Review suggest that India is the country with the unhealthiest packaged food. The survey by a consortium of researchers tested packaged food items like sweets, non-alcoholic beverages, cereal, dairy, snacks and sauces for their saturated fat, sugar and sodium contents as well as their energy density. The study was carried out between 2013 and 2018.

India scored only 2.27 index points on the scale of 0.5 (unhealthiest) to 5 (healthiest). Out of the 12 countries surveyed, the UK and the U.S. were the two countries which fared best. Being countries that also get criticized for the contents of their packaged food frequently (both scored around 2.8 points on the index), it is fair to assume that U.S. und UK snack and packaged food are also far from healthy. Yet, many emerging market countries like India, China, and Mexico did even worse on the ranking.