The numbers of corporate and multinational industries have been increasing in Nepal for the last 15 years. Of these, over 20 per cent are food-related industries. Most of food items available in the market, readymade or not, are produced by these companies. These food products are becoming more popular not only in urban, but remote, parts of the country too. People, lured by the trendy advertisements, eagerly buy these products. This indicates the lack of preference for local products. Readymade food like soft drinks, noodles, fruit juice, alcohol, confectionary items are catching on even as the consumption of traditional food items is decreasing.

There is no doubt about the advantages of readymade food. It is easy to cook, saves time and causes few hassles. However, multinational companies and industries pose a huge challenge to the small and medium sized food industries and farmers in the country. Agricultural production has seen a decline as the volume of imported food has increased. Last year, 8,000-9,000 metric tons of powder milk was imported while the Dairy Development Corporation declared many milk holidays due to its inability to buy local milk. Farmers do not get reasonable prices for products like sugarcane, coffee, tea, oil seed, fruit and vegetables. As a result, their production has decreased. For example, the production of oil seed has gone down 90 per cent in the last decade.

Corporate food industries are profit-oriented. There is no proper mechanism to monitor the quality of their products. New brands are getting an easy entry into the market without quality testing. On the other hand, exported products like honey, coffee and orthodox tea have been turned back to Nepal after failing quality tests in Europe.

Big corporate and multinational companies excercise huge influence over information, media and politicians. They can spend a lot on marketing and advertisements. Hence while the foreign products dominate the media with their adverts, local products cannot spend lavishly on advertisements. But do the advertised food stuffs really make us healthy and strong? Readymade food items contain few of the nutrients like carbohydrate, protein, minerals, vitamins and crude fibre. Over 60 per cent children visiting hospitals for lack of appetite fell sick because of aginomoto contained in foods like instant noodles and momos. They rather contain high concentrations of fats, sugar and salts. Excessive use of these ingredients causes toothache, constipation, anorexia, vomiting, malnutrition and other diseases.

Increase in the use of readymade food is closely associated with globalisation, liberalisation and urbanisation. Nepal, now a WTO member, cannot block this foodstuff from entering the country. However, it can pursue effective measures to protect consumers’ rights by adopting advanced foodstuff testing methods. Similarly, excessive advertisement of food products should be prohibited. Moreover, development of local food industries and farming enterprises is necessary to cut down on the imported food products.