Government asks eateries to fix food portions

New Delhi: How much is too much when you go out to eat? The government will answer this question now by fixing the portion sizes of dishes served by hotels and restaurants. The government has also called a meeting with hoteliers later this week. While the French already have a law against food wastage and organisations in India are running initiatives to take leftover food from eateries to feed the poor, the government of India has now stepped in.

“Most of the times when we go out and order, for example soup, one cup is enough for us. But we are served a portion which is enough for three. This is wasteful and should be stopped,” food minister Ram Vilas Paswan told this newspaper.

Explaining that the move would help avoid wasteful expenditure of food, Mr Paswan said he has called a meeting of representatives of the hotel industry to discuss the matter and arrive at some kind of common portion size.

The minister said that the government was also forming a questionnaire for hotels and restaurants to explain what dish sizes they should serve to a customer.

The government move comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in his last Mann Ki Baat programme touched on the issue of food wastage and termed it as injustice to the poor.

According to a recent government study, the country wastes Rs 92,651 crore worth of food in a year. This is enough to feed a state like Bihar for a full year.

The study by Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Central Institute of Post-Harvest Engineering and Technology (CIPHET) was commissioned in 2012 and the report submitted in 2015. The value was arrived based on the production data of 2012-13 at 2014 wholesale prices.

However, the study was done on the wastage food after the harvest and not cooked food which is being talked about now.

The study found that fruits and vegetables witnessed the maximum wastage of 4.58-15.88 per cent, followed by fisheries, which stood at 10.52 per cent. The reason for this wastage was found to be the lack of adequate infrastructure.

The food and consumer affairs ministry had earlier also decided to bring another innovation by bringing in amendments to the Consumer Protection Act which would have made brand ambassadors responsible for products they advertise.

However, the decision was rolled back after opposition from a group of ministers.