Sunita Narain, Director of the CSE, said that the study exposed the loopholes in Government that allow companies to make products without regulating the quality.

“There is no one watching over what we eat, as a result our food is in the hands of multi-nationals,” she said at the India Habitat Centre where the findings were released on Wednesday.

Chandrabhushan, who is in charge of the project drew attention to the fact that even as the food regulators had accepted trans-fats as a serious health concern, they had delaying setting the safety standard, presumably under pressure from the influential edible oil industry.

“In 2004, the Union Health Ministry’s Oils and Fats Sub-committee, under the Central Committee for Food Standards, began discussions on a standard for trans-fat, but the Central committee is still awaiting more data,” he said.