The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), which took up cudgels against the health hazards due to junk food has hailed the UP governments decision to put an immediate ban on its sale within the premises and outside ICSE, CBSE and UP Board schools. “It is a significant and laudable step towards protecting our children from future health impairments,” pointed Director of CSE Sunita Narain while hailing the UP government’s decision to ban the sale of junk food and carbonated soft drinks on the school campuses and outside. Junk food is known to lead to a host of diseases including diabetes, high blood pressure and increased cholesterol levels. “Though some food may be prepared with healthy ingredients like vegetables, they are still ‘junk’. The burger, for example, contains meat and vegetables; the ‘junk’ in it comes from the refined flour that is used to make the buns, and the mayonnaise and butter that are added to the filling” ” claimed Sunita Narain. “We fully support the UP government’s move, because we believe that junk food needs to be replaced by nutritious food, especially in schools. We are hoping that other state governments will follow suit,” said CSE’s deputy director general Chandra Bhushan, who heads the team which conducted lab tests. Only last week, the CSE had released results of lab tests carried out on 16 easily available brands of junk foods like Maggi and Top Ramen noodles, MacDonald’s foods, KFC’s fried chicken and Haldiram’s Aloo Bhujia, among others. The results showed that these have enough trans fats, salt and sugar to lead to early onset of diseases in the young. The CSE survey revealed that the compaies were indulging in misinformation, misbranding, wrong labelling and obfuscation. It surfaced that many junk foods by major brands claimed that they had ‘0’ trans fats, some did not even bother to mention how much trans fats they have but the lab tests found trans fats in them. The UP government’s action comes as a sequel to instructions issued by Union Health and Family Planning ministry, some time back.