Union Health Minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss on Monday slammed Bollywood and PepsiCo -- the former for celebrating smoking in its movies and the latter for promoting junk food and drink in India.
Ramadoss, who was the keynote speaker at the 26th annual convention of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin in Las Vegas, said, "In the 1950s, the incident of smoking in movies was only about 30 percent. In 2004, it rose to 89 percent of Indian movies having smoking scenes."
"In 1950s, only the villains were smoking. In 2004, 76 percent of the movies had heroes smoking. So, this was again a huge cause for our young children to take up smoking and I have been fighting against them --- movies and all sorts of activities -- but, as you know, the industry is very strong and I have to go through a lot of flak on this as well."
Ramadoss didn't spare the media, saying, "The media in India is sensationalised and Kareena Kapoor wearing brown shoes is breaking news in India."
"Alcohol is another problem we are facing," he said, and noted, "India has got demographically the youngest youth population in the world -- 600 million youth below the age of 30 -- and it is such a huge asset for us. So, we need to protect them to make India productive and make India a more developed country and that's precisely what we are trying to do -- trying to have policies against alcohol."
Ramadoss said another burgeoning problem in India was junk food, and asked, "How many of you know that a can of Pepsi has seven teaspoons of sugar?