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Workers at the Parle factory in Neemrana, Rajasthan, produce the Parle-G, the bestselling cookie in the world. First produced in 1939 as a cheaper Indian-made alternative to imported British tea biscuits, the affordable cookie is now an Indian cultural touchstone popular in more than one hundred countries, with an estimated 4,500 Parle-Gs eaten every second. For tens of millions of Indians, it is a vital source of quick, inexpensive calories: A pack of 11 biscuits costs 6 US cents and contains 250 kilocalories. India, which overtook China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023, with more than 1.4 billion people, is also home to a quarter of the world’s undernourished citizens, with a fifth of the population living on less than two dollars a day. Even as per capita income tripled over the last two decades, the government had to provide subsidized food rations to 800 million people. One of the great challenges to feeding the world remains providing for both the haves and the have-nots. When world leaders adopted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #2 in 2015 to end global hunger by 2030, there were an estimated 795 million malnourished people on Earth. In 2023 that number had risen to 828 million.

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Workers at the Parle factory in Neemrana, Rajasthan, produce the Parle-G, the bestselling cookie in the world. First produced in 1939 as a cheaper Indian-made alternative to imported British tea biscuits, the affordable cookie is now an Indian cultural touchstone popular in more than one hundred countries, with an estimated 4,500 Parle-Gs eaten every second. For tens of millions of Indians, it is a vital source of quick, inexpensive calories: A pack of 11 biscuits costs 6 US cents and contains 250 kilocalories. India, which overtook China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023, with more than 1.4 billion people, is also home to a quarter of the world’s undernourished citizens, with a fifth of the population living on less than two dollars a day. Even as per capita income tripled over the last two decades, the government had to provide subsidized food rations to 800 million people. One of the great challenges to feeding the world remains providing for both the haves and the have-nots. When world leaders adopted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #2 in 2015 to end global hunger by 2030, there were an estimated 795 million malnourished people on Earth. In 2023 that number had risen to 828 million.

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