FSSAI Tells Supreme Court It Will Bring Red-Hexagon Sugar, Salt and Fat Warnings in One Phase

The news

New Delhi. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) told the Supreme Court on Wednesday, September 23, that it will bring in front-of-pack nutrition labelling on packaged food and beverages in a single phase rather than in stages. Front-of-pack labelling means a simple warning on the face of the packet, where a shopper looks first, rather than the detailed nutrition table on the back. In a compliance affidavit, FSSAI said it needs about four months to finalise and issue the draft regulations under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, after which food business operators get one year to comply. The Economic Times says the year is meant to spare firms with packaging already printed in bulk “commercial hardships”. The Hindu calls it “a voluntary implementation period of 365 days”. The affidavit answers the Court’s order of September 10, which asked for a “reasonable, scientifically justified and clearly defined timeline” and called food safety a cause of “national interest”. The proposed symbol, in a format similar to Canada’s, is a red hexagon on a white square background, printed with the names of the nutrients that exceed prescribed limits. It must sit at the top left of the front of the pack, in a font at least one point larger than the back-of-pack nutrition table. One hexagon will list every nutrient in excess; FSSAI rejected public health activists’ demand for a separate symbol per nutrient, saying it could confuse consumers. A product high in even one of sugar, salt or fat carries the warning. The thresholds are those of the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). For packaged food, sugar is set at 5% of energy from added sugar, with total sugar not exceeding 10%, and fat at 15% of energy from added fat and up to 30% from total fat. For liquid foods and beverages, the fat limits stay the same and the sugar limits are 10% and 30% of energy. So lemon juice with more than 2 g of added sugar or 175 mg of salt per 100 ml, or chips with added fat above 4.2 g or salt above 625 mg per 100 g, would carry the warning. On fat, the papers differ: ET says added fat, The Hindu saturated fat. The syllabus link is GS2 on health and GS3 on food processing and consumer protection.

Static syllabus linkage

1. The FSS Act, 2006 made FSSAI the single food regulator and gave it the power to prescribe labels. The Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 brought eight earlier food laws and orders together, including the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954, and replaced them with a single science-based framework. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India is a statutory body set up under Section 4 of the Act. It works under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and State Commissioners of Food Safety enforce the law on the ground. Section 23 bars the sale of packaged food that is not marked and labelled as regulations specify, and FSSAI frames those regulations under Section 92 with the prior approval of the Central Government. The Act penalises misbranded food under Section 52 and misleading advertisements under Section 53, and these provisions are the legal basis for action against false health claims.
2. India has argued over front-of-pack labels for more than a decade, and each draft was weaker than the last. According to Down To Earth, an FSSAI expert committee recommended in 2014 that calories and nutrients of concern, such as sugar, fat and salt, be shown on the front of packs. A 2018 draft required nutrients above the thresholds to be highlighted in red. A 2019 revision replaced salt with sodium, total fat with saturated fat, and total sugar with added sugar, and the Centre for Science and Environment said these changes suited industry. The FSS (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020, which govern back-of-pack nutrition information today, were notified without front-of-pack warnings. In 2022 FSSAI proposed an ‘Indian Nutrition Rating’, a star system in which healthier products earn more stars. Public health experts criticised it because stars can make foods high in sugar, salt or fat look healthy. According to LiveLaw, the present proceedings are in 3S and Our Health Society v. Union of India before the Supreme Court.
3. Warning labels and rating labels rest on two different ideas, and warnings are the stronger tool against harmful nutrients. Front-of-pack systems that tell the shopper what the numbers mean fall into two families. Rating systems, such as Australia’s voluntary Health Star Rating and France’s Nutri-Score, grade the whole product and let good nutrients such as fibre or protein offset bad ones. Warning systems flag only what is harmful. Chile’s Law 20.606 on food labelling and advertising, enacted in 2012 and in force from 2016, requires a black octagonal ‘high in’ label for each of sugar, sodium, saturated fat and calories and restricts the marketing of such foods to children. Several Latin American countries have since adopted similar warnings. Canada’s mandatory symbol, required from 2026, is a single black-and-white ‘high in’ box that lists every nutrient in excess together, which is the one-symbol approach FSSAI says it is following.
4. WHO limits and Article 47 set the public-health baseline against which the thresholds must be judged. The World Health Organization recommends keeping free sugars below 10% of total energy intake, and below 5% for further benefit, and keeping adult salt intake under 5 g a day. Its global action plan on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) set voluntary targets, including a 25% relative reduction in premature NCD mortality and a 30% relative reduction in mean population salt intake by 2025. Foods high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) are a major dietary driver of obesity, hypertension and diabetes. In India, the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, an ICMR institute, prepares dietary guidelines and nutrient thresholds. Article 47 of the Constitution directs the State to regard raising the level of nutrition and improving public health as among its primary duties.

Why UPSC loves this

1. GS2 health and GS3 food processing meet in a single regulatory question. The syllabus names issues relating to health and food processing and related industries in India. Mains questions on lifestyle diseases and on regulating processed food can use this case as current evidence that design choices decide whether a regulation works: the symbol, the thresholds and the timeline.
2. Prelims tests regulators through their parent Act, ministry and powers. Questions on regulators usually ask which Act creates a body, which ministry it sits under and whether its orders bind. FSSAI, the FSS Act’s regulation-making power, ICMR-NIN and the WHO sugar and salt limits are all likely material, as is the difference between warning labels and rating labels. Constitutional anchors such as Article 47 are frequently paired with such questions.

Analysis

1. “Single phase” is the headline concession, but mandatory warnings are still more than a year away. Public health groups feared a phased roll-out in which the most contested products would be put off and each new phase would reopen lobbying, and a single phase removes that risk. But the regulator’s own timetable is about four months to issue the regulations and then a 365-day window. Even if nothing slips, mandatory warnings would not reach shelves before early 2028. The Hindu’s word ‘voluntary’ matters here: if compliance is voluntary for the year, the warning becomes an obligation only at the end, and makers of the least healthy products have no reason to move early. The industry’s point about packaging printed in bulk justifies a transition period, but not necessarily a full year. On the other side, a rushed rule invites litigation and stays, and one deadline that holds is better than an ambitious one that a court suspends.
2. Choosing a warning over the star rating is the real victory in the affidavit. The 2022 Indian Nutrition Rating could have let a biscuit high in sugar earn stars for its fibre or protein, which is the ‘health halo’ critics warned about. A red hexagon names only the nutrients in excess, gives no credit for anything else, and asks the shopper one question: is this product high in something harmful? The refusal to give each nutrient its own symbol is a defensible choice for a crowded Indian pack, but it has a cost. A product high in all three nutrients carries one hexagon, just like a product high in one, so the signal does not grow with the harm. Chile’s approach of one octagon per nutrient makes a very unhealthy product look very unhealthy, and that is why activists wanted it.
3. The thresholds and their exact wording, more than the colour, will decide how many products are caught. Thresholds from ICMR-NIN rest on Indian science, which makes them harder to challenge in court than an imported model. But a threshold stated as a share of energy can be met through reformulation, for example by replacing sugar with non-nutritive sweeteners, so the regulation will need clear rules on what counts as ‘added’. Given the papers’ split between added and saturated fat, it matters that Down To Earth records that the 2019 draft’s move from total fat to saturated fat and from salt to sodium was seen as friendly to industry, so the final wording deserves close reading. Salt against sodium is not a small matter, because 1 g of sodium equals about 2.5 g of salt, and a limit written in sodium looks lower than the same limit written in salt. Manufacturers reformulating to stay just below the line is not a loophole. It is the policy working as intended.
4. The action against e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms shows that labels matter only where the shopper actually sees them, and that is increasingly a screen. Alongside the affidavit, ET reports, FSSAI began penal action against Amazon, Flipkart India, Swiggy Instamart, Zepto and BigBasket over allegedly misleading claims about Happilo Premium Date Bites – Zesty Orange. Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket also face action over three Milky Mist dairy products, and Amazon Seller Services, Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket over the online sale of fruits and seeds of Datura, a poisonous plant. A red hexagon on the physical pack is useless if the app shows only a product photograph, so the final regulation should require the warning in every online listing. Platforms will argue that they are marketplaces and that sellers carry the liability. But if the Datura allegation holds, it shows that the platform’s own listing checks are the only practical control.
5. When a regulator needs a Supreme Court timeline, the failure is institutional. The Court’s language of ‘national interest’ and its demand for a ‘clearly defined timeline’ show a court filling a gap that the regulator left open for years. LiveLaw has reported that the Court earlier questioned whether FSSAI’s opposition to warning labels came from industry pressure. A court can set deadlines but cannot design a label. The scientific panels and public consultation under the FSS Act are the right forum, and litigation should hold them to account, not replace them. The counter-view is plain: a decade of drafts shows that without the Court nothing would have moved. The lasting fix would be statutory or regulatory time limits for finalising health-critical regulations once a draft is published.

Administrator's brainstorm