by Marion Nestle
Nov 30 2007

India’s grocery transition

The Wall Street Journal offers a terrific window on India’s food transition. Take a look at the slideshow comparing India’s vegetable markets now to what they will look like once the German retailing company, Metro, gets established.

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  • Oh great. India will now have the same year-round, highly traveled, good looking-but-nasty-inside crap to eat that we have in our grocery stores. They’ve already been replacing industrial vegetable oil products for the traditional ghee (clarified butter) in recent years.

    I doubt most people realize that India has more heart disease patients than any country in the world. This can only get worse with this kind of food retailing. I guess we have to start looking for new names for “Western diseases” and “western diet”. Globalization and bypasses for everyone, I guess.

  • Asian Indians also have an extremely high heart disease rate when they emigrate to other countries (UK, US, Cnanada, Australia, etc.). So now with the Western style grocery chains coming to India, they don’t even have to leave their home to have the heart attack of their US and UK cousins have.

  • Fentry

    This just made me very sad.

    I thought it was a bit strange that the WSJ insisted the produce was “looking tired” as it traveled through the traditional supply chain. The article insisted this both in the main body and also as a caption to one of the photographs in the slide show–but it certainly didn’t look “tired” to me, but rather fresh and vibrant. Why the editorial insistence?