INVESTIGATING THE TREND OF PRODUCING UNHEALTHY FOOD PRODUCTS IN IRAN

Background and Aim: Nowadays, the change in the lifestyle is known as the leading cause of the incidence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Iran (1). One of the main challenges in this regard is the people preference to eat foods that are unhealthy, including high-sugar, high-fat or high-fat processed foods and foods having little nutritional value (2). The consumption of these foods is increasing due to ease of access to these products, their cost-effectiveness, the economic conditions of society, and the occupation and time constraints. According to available evidences, the rate of unhealthy foods has increased in countries with low or moderate incomes compared to high-income countries. The study aimed to determine the trend of producing unhealthy food products of food industries in Iran.Methods: Materials and methods: In this descriptive - analytical and cross-sectional study, Industries that produce unhealthy food in different provinces and cities have been investigated in terms of the type and amount of production of these types of foods. For this purpose, in the first stage, a list of foods which determined by the Ministry of Health (MoH) as unhealthy products was identified. Then, the number of licenses issued for production units was extracted from the Ministry of Industry, Mine & Trade to compare the number of licenses before and after the determination of unhealthy food items. On the other hand, the number of manufacturing licenses for all identified unhealthy food product items in the food industry was gathered by referring to the Food and Drug Administration, and categorized by food groups such as sausages, dairy products, chips and snacks, and soft drinks, Oil, butter and etc. Then, by referring to the relevant associations, the statistics of the production of unhealthy food products were recorded from the years before and after the determination of the unhealthy foods list and analyzed to identify the production trends. Excel software was used to aggregate the data.Results: According to data analysis, the lowest number of license in majority of provinces was related to salty products with more than 5 percent salts and the highest number of license related to meat products and ready-to-eat foods, and then a variety of sweet products and beverages. The Tehran province had the highest number of licenses for various types of unhealthy food products. The highest number of manufacturing units was located in the Tehran province. The largest number of license for production unit were related to meat products and ready-to-eat foods, different types of sweet products and beverages, dairy products in Tehran province with 870, 690, and 585 license numbers, respectively, meat products and ready-to-eat foods in Fars and Isfahan Provinces with 572 and 522 license, respectively. The highest number of licenses was issued for meat products and ready-to-eat foods, salty products with more than 5 percent salts and dairy products in year 2010, and the lowest number of licenses was issued in year 2015 to 2017, which is probably due to a defect in the information recorded during these years. Meat products and ready-to-eat food products had the highest number of license in different years.Conclusion: Discussion: According to the results of this study, it is necessary to revise the licensing of unhealthy food production in Iran. The amount of unhealthy food products can be considered as one of the important indicators in the community nutritional health. One of the most well-known methods to propel the consumers toward less consumption of unhealthy foods is, guiding consumers to select healthy food products through restriction of unhealthy food products advertising, food labeling including nutritional fact tables and traffic light and fiscal policies.

Keywords:

trend , unhealthy food , industry , Iran