How the Organic Food Category is Shaping in India Here's Why Organic Food Has Become so Essential For India
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Over the course of the past few years, there has been an increased level of awareness amongst people about how the modern and fast-paced lifestyle is inevitably leading them towards diseases. This is why people end up spending more on their healthcare with every passing year. The fear of succumbing to these diseases has massively led an alliance where people have started switching to healthier food alternatives. Social media has played an important role in raising awareness about the ill-effects of food we consume and many celebrities have come together endorsing the importance of a healthier lifestyle.
Awareness
With growing awareness about the benefits of organic food, sales of organic food products have grown severely in the last few years. The aforementioned shift in trend is majorly seen in big metropolises like Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, whereas the rural parts of India are still unaware of the ill-effects of adulterated food items. This may be a result of lack of social media influence in these areas of India, leaving them prone to unhealthy food choices. The fact that rural India is a major producer of organic food but still remains unaware of its importance is the biggest irony of the current situation.
The Pollutants
With the rise in pollution, there has been an extensive debate about the contamination of soil and water, giving birth to the fear of what we consume. The switch to organic food items began when parents started to question the number of chemicals present in the food that they were supposed to feed their children. This led to a clear choice where one could go for a safer and healthier alternative in organic food.
The Indian population has started to realize the contamination of food right from the ground level and with the knowledge in hand, want to keep away from the adulterated food sources. The awareness is slowly but massively affecting everyone, creating an upsurge of people who have now started to switch to organic food and beverages. Social media and the internet as a whole have given people a good idea of how their everyday food items are being contaminated, right from the beginning through the use of pesticides and chemicals. This knowledge has fueled the protective instincts in the Indian population, who don't want to be negatively affected by the items they consume to stay alive.
The Data
If one is to trust recent studies, it is being said that organic packaged food may be the largest emerging trend in India with its primary consumers being the urban population of India. Apart from changing the current market perception about unhealthy food, India has also become the second largest exporter of organic food items in Asia, after China.
Today, a lot of food items like flour and sugar are available in "organic" alternatives. Even something as essential to life like water can be seen under this organic category, showing how much India has adapted to embrace organic food.
The Ray of Hope
The ease of accessing the Internet has played a key role in making people aware of the importance of organic food over the unhealthier alternatives, making them especially popular in Tier I and Tier II cities. However, there still is a lot of areas to cover, in terms of spreading awareness about the importance of eating healthy food. Apart from the major metro cities, there still are a lot of places, especially in rural India that need to know about the contamination in their food items and how they, too, need to switch to organic food. The amount of success that organic food sector has faced in India is commendable and with some more time, even the rural parts of the country would understand the importance of eating unadulterated food and will switch to a healthier way of lifestyle like the rest of India.