Discovery of high amounts of lead led to the ban of India’s favourite noodles, Maggi. Will it bring about a lifestyle change in consumers? Is Maggi the only evil in the market?
ajay ahluWalia// I have personally never liked Maggi — and although I’ve worked on the brand as well as others in the Nestle portfolio, I’ve never endorsed it to anyone.
Yet strangely enough, much as I personally dislike the product and what it stands for, I’m ending up sort of defending both the brand, as well as the company. The problem with the Maggi controversy is that it rakes up too many issues across too many levels.
I mean, one fine day the government wakes up, says it’s found lead in the product, and proceeds to ban it and threatens to sue the company, citing (really?) common good. Everybody jumps on, and suddenly Maggi is a bad word.
But hang on. Let’s pause for a few questions first. Have Maggi and Nestle been systemically poisoning the Indian population for the many, many years they’ve been around? Are they doing so, and have been doing so, across products? Or — if at all high levels of lead were found — was it a mistake? A lapse of systems and quality checks? Negligence, perhaps?If what will be a first then, Maggi and Nestle are part of an evil international conspiracy, and they deserve to be burnt at the stake/ crucified/ fed Maggi to death and so on.
If it’s the second, then they’re guilty — not of being evil, but of being daft.
For instance, let’s say I have a cook who has been with me for years, and one day I find the rotis taste of insect spray. A few questions arise: Has she been filling us with insecticide for years?
Have I been asleep that I didn’t bother checking all this while?
Or was she just careless when she cooked over an area she’d sprayed without cleaning properly? Should I just shoot her first and ask questions later, if at all? Or should I first figure out what happened, why it happened, and then take appropriate steps to deal with it — and ensure it doesn’t happen again, either by her or by anyone else (institute best practices)?
And even if I respond like a fool, should other people in the house start condemning her and brand her a villain — or should one or all of them try to get to the bottom of it and help me back to the shores of sanity?
The actors in the narrative above are: the maid in place of Maggi; the government in place of me; and the media in place of “others in the house”.
Why has the media not taken samples of Maggi, packed it off to high-end labs across the world, and got their own reports? Why have they not dug out old, expired packs from some distributor and done the same with them? I can’t do that — I don’t have the resources — but the media can. At one shot, we’d have figured whether this was a one-off, isolated incident due to a process failure, or a systemic malpractice.
Are the media mere reporters of gossip? What happened to investigative journalism?
And what happened to the theory of innocent-untilproven- guilty?
Most important is the role of the government. It cannot act in a knee-jerk manner; it has a fiduciary duty to the people and needs to behave in a sensible, consistent, thought-through manner.
Has the government not been monitoring the quality of Nestle’s products until now? If they haven’t, they’re as guilty of negligence as Nestle would be if they’ve failed quality processes.
Does the government monitor ALL other products? What about the cups and saucers and plates you use? Have they been tested for lead content? Or melamine? What about the sweets you eat? The ice creams? What about toxic chemicals in your day-to-day food?
Why isn’t the government monitoring those, banning those, making a huge hue and cry about them? Why is the media silent?
If Nestle is guilty, then they should be punished — appropriately — depending upon the nature of guilt.
But then, so should everyone else — including the vendors and manufacturers selling local, low-quality ice cream and products to poor children outside their schools.
The law has to apply, yes. But equally. Anything else smacks of subterfuge, intrigue, or just plain stupidity and double standards.
Sonia bajaj// I completely support the recent ban on Maggi and feel it was high time it happened, especially after the revelations about the product. The noodles, arguably the nation’s favourite quick and easy-to-make snack, are plain unhealthy. This ban will enable and encourage healthy food choices among people and will make them pay attention to what they put into their bodies.
I personally feel the nationwide phenomenon that is Maggi had slowly turned into an addiction for kids over time. The more they ate it, the more they wanted it. As a mother, I too faced a situation where my two sons would coax me to let them have Maggi instead of proper wholesome food. I obviously could not make them stop eating it altogether but I made sure it doesn’t replace their meals. Food products such as Maggi are a treat, and should not be part of your everyday diet.
In our fast lives, we tend to depend hugely on packaged food to gain time. But we are missing the point here. Quick food isn’t always healthy food.
Packaged foods such as the 2-minute noodles contain huge amounts of preservatives. The nutrition tables on the back of these packets, according to me, are marketing gimmicks. Just statistics decorated to sell. Once you see that the list of ingredients on the packet includes preservatives, be sure the nutritional values it claims to have has no value. The nutrients are pretty much killed by the added MSG and preservatives. What stays back are the calories and fats that hardly do you any good.
Consumers of packaged foods must understand the ways in which these edibles are harming our body. The preservatives not only eliminate nutritional values, they affect our brain. Too much intake leads to depression among adults and turns children into hyperactive freaks. They also clog our arteries and may cause many different cancers. Also, the fact that the base ingredient in these noodle cakes is maida (wheat flour) seems to slip people’s attention. Maida makes you obese, and all major bodily disorders and joint problems are caused by obesity. Arthritis, osteoporosis and depression are all results of heavy and uncontrolled intake of the ingredient.
What really sets me off about the issue is that celebrities endorse products such as these without full knowledge of what they are endorsing. As role models to the society, isn’t it their moral responsibility to at least know what it is that they are going to endorse? Before encouraging people to consume a certain product, isn’t it necessary to find out everything there is to know about it? I personally feel these celebrities are cheating on the consumer.
While on one hand we say consumption of products such as tobacco is harmful and causes cancer, on the other hand we have celebrities endorsing all kinds of pan masala brands. How are we supposed to police people on their food preferences when personalities who they look up to lead them down such lanes?
As humans, we are attracted to anything and everything. And it is alright to be. Enjoyment is our right, no matter how we do it. Alcohol, cigarettes or Maggi, you will consume what you want, and no one can stop you. When we were children, we were taught that anything in excess is bad. But as grownups, we seem to be forgetting that and give in to temptation, one time too many. Having products such as Maggi, which contain certain amount of harmful ingredients, once a while, is fine, but let us try and not make it part of our lifestyle. Let us try and live healthier and longer lives. And that will start with a choice, which won’t be Maggi.