Food science writer Krish Ashok of ‘Masala Lab’ fame busts nutrition myths by the dozen while juggling a day job as head of AI at a tech firm. He tells Srirupa Ray why we must look past food marketing and not treat social media claims as medical adviceFSSAI’s recent proposal to have a ‘red hexagon’ warning for packaged food high on salt, sugar and saturated fat has drawn criticism from health experts and food companies alike. Do you think it will help?Yes, in principle, it can help people make a quicker, better-informed choice. One should not need a calculator and a magnifying glass to discover that a biscuit marketed as ‘wholesome’ is high in sugar or saturated fat. That said, it also creates an incentive to make sure a product just about conforms, thus a product that is genuinely low on saturated fat could now add enough to be just under the limit. And we should apply the same nutritional reasoning to familiar foods. A traditional sweet or namkeen does not become nutritionally superior because it uses jaggery or comes from a local shop. The useful question is how much sugar, salt and saturated fat you are eating — not whether the food looks modern or traditional.How trustworthy are sugar-free, fat-free and preservative-free tags on products?Food marketing should be treated as advertising, not as a health certificate. The healthiest things do not need to be marketed. Sugar-free does not mean low-calorie; the calories may come from fat or fillers such as maltodextrin. Fat-free may mean more sugar, salt or emulsifiers added to make the product palatable. Preservative-free does not necessarily mean safer. ‘No added sugar’ may still mean dates, honey, jaggery or fruit concentrate — all sources of sugar. Gluten-free is useful for those with Celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, but does not make a product healthy. Marketed healthfulness can have zero correlation with actual healthfulness. Read the ingredient list and nutrition panel: look at added sugar, carbs, protein, fibre, total fat and saturated fat.
The food industry has spent years learning how to weaken satiety: remove fibre, raise sugar, salt, fat and glutamate to create ultra-palatable foods… Learn to distinguish between content, knowledge and advice. Anything on social media, including my videos, is content. At best, it should provoke you to investigate further
Krish Ashok
In one of your reels, you have said that GLP-1 drugs make junk food taste bad. What’s the science behind that?GLP-1 drugs trigger satiety signalling earlier, so people eat less and think about food less. The same hormonal system also interacts with reward pathways involved in cravings, although findings about wider changes in preference are still early. The food industry has spent years learning how to weaken satiety: remove fibre, raise sugar, salt, fat and glutamate to create ultra-palatable foods. Some people taking GLP-1 drugs report that intensely flavoured snacks such as chips suddenly taste excessively salty or unpleasant, as though human biology has acquired a weapon in its long contest with food engineering. Companies are already exploring ‘GLP-1-friendly’ snacks. But these drugs are still evolving, so hype and industry-funded research must be scrutinised.There’s rampant over-information as well as misinformation driving food anxiety. How can you separate the wheat from chaff?Learn to distinguish between content, knowledge and advice. Anything on social media — including my videos — is content. At best, it should provoke you to investigate further, not change your habits. Knowledge emerges through years of research, criticism, peer review and a body of evidence that usually comes with caveats. Advice is grounded in a clinician knowing your personal medical history. It does not happen through a generic social-media video. When someone says an ingredient is dangerous or causes cancer, ask: is it a hazard or a real-world risk at the dose people consume? Was the study conducted in humans, mice or in a Petri dish? Is the claim based on one paper or years of evidence? A ‘40% increase’ sounds terrifying, but if the risk rises from 0.001 to 0.0014, the context changes completely. We should teach this kind of risk literacy in schools — especially when algorithms are designed to amplify frightening content.Are foods described as natural, herbal or organic necessarily safer?Arsenic, botulinum toxin, salmonella and cobra venom are all natural, and can be fatal, whereas vaccines and insulin are artificial and can save lives. Natural describes origin, not safety. Safety depends on the substance, the dose and the level of exposure: even too much water or salt can be dangerous. ‘Herbal’ does not mean chemical-free: plants have pharmacologically active chemicals. Organic does not automatically mean nutritious or safer either; it is a production and regulatory standard. Organic farming may avoid synthetic pesticides, but will still use permitted pesticides from natural sources.What does the ‘free-range’ label mean?When people hear the term ‘free-range chicken’, they may picture birds roaming freely outdoors. But in reality, it means the cage is just 2 feet larger. Allowing millions of chicken to roam freely is impractical on a large scale and would make the product much more expensive.There’s this line of thought that eggs are vegetarian. What do you think?Whether eggs are vegetarian comes down to definition. If vegetarian means consuming nothing of animal origin, then the correct term is vegan — which excludes milk, honey, eggs as well as meat. A broader definition of vegetarianism, however, can permit animal-derived foods as long as producing them does not require killing an animal. By that logic, both milk and eggs qualify. Table eggs from commercial poultry farms are generally unfertilised. Unless a hen has mated with a rooster, the egg contains no embryo and cannot develop into a chick. The hen will lay such eggs regardless of whether humans eat them.Listen to the podcast here: The engineer in the kitchen: A food science masterclass
