Editorial
The fast food we eat
Quality control needed
Barring notable exceptions of fast food shops that offer food stuffs of international standards, health experts have expressed worries about indifferent quality of food served by wayside eating places. It was never a secret that regular intake of such foods could have a highly negative impact on the physical or even mental growth of school and college students. It can even cause loss of appetite and slowing down of brain development.
The question of health and hygiene standards in preparing the foods is also very important here. Fast foods have been found to be unwholesome even in the developed countries where health and hygiene standards are strictly maintained. But in our case the ingredients used to prepare fast food are of doubtful quality, nor do the fast food shop owners, the majority of them, comply strictly with the rules in order to make the foods safe for consumption. The result often is that the school children don't really know what they are ingesting in the name of fast food.
Of course, it is not enough to have a few shops that supply good food. The problem is that there are small catering centres in most of the schools and colleges, which prepare and sell the so called fast food, the quality of which is often found to be unsatisfactory. The school authorities ought to bother about what the students take on a regular basis. Perhaps more homemade tiffin holds an answer.
It is imperative that the children are given nutritious foods and not the junk stuff with sugary drinks that are detrimental to their health.
Finally, a mechanism should be in place to monitor the quality of the foods supplied by the shops and catering centres. It has to be ensured that stale and substandard foods are not supplied. This is of course true about foods of all types and the danger becomes far too great when it comes to the young consumers.
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