Restaurants in Pakistan must list calories on menus: Officials

Prime Minister of Pakistan’s Strategic Reformer Unit chief Salman Sufi has announced that the ‘Sahat Mand Diyata Thamsani Sada’ project has been launched to list calories on the menus of all restaurants across Pakistan.

Salman Sufi announced in one of his tweets: ‘Starting a healthy future, all the food authorities from all over Pakistan have launched the healthy food, health and wellness project. All restaurants will list calories on their menus. Now people will be able to know how much food should be consumed daily. This will significantly reduce diabetes and heart diseases.’

The head of the Strategic Reforms Unit of the Prime Minister of Pakistan further wrote: Trans fat is being limited to only two percent. The ingredients of the packaged food will be written on the packet as per the guidelines of the World Health Organization. This step will become the foundation of a healthy Pakistan.

Additional Director General Operations Punjab Food Authority Asif Ali Dogar told Independent Urdu in this regard that ‘Actually, this is an initiative of the Prime Minister of Pakistan Mian Shahbaz Sharif, which will be applied in all four provinces.’

“In Punjab, Director General of Punjab Food Authority Raja Jahangir Anwar is leading this and we have inaugurated this project yesterday in Lahore.”

He said: ‘Our first target is that category A restaurants, which include big food chains, restaurants in MM Alam Road and other posh areas, here in the first phase we will apply this policy and their The calorie count will be written on the menu.

According to him, this project will be completed in one year, but in Lahore we will complete it in three malls. And our priority in these three months is category one restaurants.’

How do restaurant owners count calories?

In this regard, Asif Ali Dogar said: ‘This was the first challenge of the restaurant owners. He said that a food technologist or a nutritionist would have to be hired for this, but the Food Authority has its own nutritionist wing in which more than 50 nutritionists are working.

“In the meeting with the stakeholders, it was decided that we will provide this support to the restaurants free of charge. Currently, we are in the phase of creating a regulation under which we will calculate how many calories are in the food dishes that are usually served in restaurants, such as curry or burger.

“By making these regulations, we will notify all the stakeholders and their calories will be written according to the food in their menu.”

Will the calories of Lahore’s desi khabs also be counted?

In this regard, the Additional DG said: ‘We have all kinds of restaurants on our radar, indigenous restaurants inside Lahore or food street or other indigenous food restaurants, they come in our category B, we will look at them in the second phase. ‘

What was the reaction of the restaurant owners?

On this, Asif Ali Dogar said that ‘Lahore Restaurants Association and Punjab Restaurants Association have been taken on board. Their first objection was that their customers would be less.

“To solve this problem, we have given them the support that dietitians will give them. There is also an application that our IT department will work on. We will collect their menus and our team will assess it and give it back to them and try to minimize the challenge for them.’

According to him, ‘but their second fear is that customers will decrease, this is their fear because anyway, when the number of calories is written next to the food, then the person will be thinking whether to eat or not. .’

What do restaurant owners say?

According to a well-known restaurant owner in Lahore who spoke to Independent Urdu but did not want to be named: ‘There are many problems with this project. All over the world we have traveled and eaten food from country to country but we have never seen anything like this.’

He said, ‘The concept of writing calories in juice bars or restaurants that sell healthy food in the world, the law is not even there. The second thing is that what is street food or for example, there are phaje, they may not even know what the calories are, where will they write them?’

The owner of the said restaurant said that “Our country does not have a culture of calories, especially the culture of Punjab is to eat ‘Khala Dalla’.” This includes biryanis and fried foods. I think calories should be added but it should not be forced on everyone. However, it has become so difficult to do business in Pakistan and new policies are made on it.

Are the calories listed on the menu accurate?

In this regard, we also spoke to a nutritionist, Zainab Gondal. Zainab says: ‘When we count calories we look at the macro and micro level. We see how much fat is being poured into it, how much butter is being added, and we will count it all and write it down.’

Zainab said that ‘90% of the people who go to eat at restaurants go without taking care of their health. The remaining 10 percent who eat out health-consciously order things that are low in calories, such as barbecue or steaks without sauce.

According to him, ‘the same amount cannot be used every time for each dish, many times something changes when cooking, like adding more butter, which means the fat in the food has increased.’

Says Zainab, ‘Many times the ratio of pasta is reduced, which reduces the required carbohydrates. Many times the meat is more or less cooked. The bigger the restaurants, the more or less the portion of the food served, the calorie count is messed up. I think it will be very difficult for the concerned authorities to implement this plan.’