Former Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) chief Pawan Kumar Agarwal has warned that the proposed front-of-pack food warnings could end up on almost every packaged food product, potentially diluting their impact, and urged the Supreme Court to consider a phased implementation. He also offered to assist the court in the process.
More than 94% of packaged foods could attract at least one warning under the proposed nutrient thresholds, according to a study commissioned by Agarwal’s non-profit organisation, Food Future Foundation (FFF).
In an intervention before the Supreme Court, Agarwal proposed starting with less stringent interim thresholds and progressively tightening them to the final limits over three to five years, while notifying the entire roadmap upfront.
The proposal comes as the top court pushes for urgency in finalising the front-of-pack labelling rules.
FFF said the front-of-pack labelling (FoPL) regulations should be made mandatory from July 1, 2027, with interim threshold and tightened over three to five years. The foundation works with public institutions, schools and research organisations on food, nutrition and preventive health.
The recommendations are based partly on an analysis by FFF from Hyderabad-based food data company NatFirst, which examined the declared nutritional composition of 44,109 barcode records of packaged branded foods available at retail in India. The analysis found that 94.1% of the records exceeded at least one of the specified thresholds, while only 5.9% did not breach any. Among records classified as high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS), 85.3% breached two or more thresholds, while 10.4% breached all four.
FFF argued that applying the proposed final thresholds immediately could result in warnings appearing on nearly all packaged foods, potentially diluting the impact of the labels.
On another contentious issue, Agarwal’s foundation took a firm position that a packaged food should carry a warning if even one nutrient of concern exceeds the prescribed threshold from the outset.
Added sugar, saturated fat
The intervention favoured added sugar rather than total sugar and added sodium after adjusting for naturally occurring sodium. For fats, it recommended saturated fat rather than total fat as the warning parameter.FFF also said that the possible increases in preservatives, emulsifiers, artificial sweeteners or other additives resulting from reformulation should be separately monitored and regulated.
On the design of warnings, FFF supported retaining red as the warning colour and proposed a prominent standardised warning device identifying the particular nutrients exceeding the limits, such as “High in sugar”, “High in sodium” or “High in saturated fat”.
The intervention comes after the Supreme Court on September 10 asked FSSAI to answer 12 questions on the proposed FoPL regime, including its two-phase structure, nutrient thresholds, treatment of sweetened beverages, warning design and implementation timeline. The regulator was given 10 days to respond, with the matter listed for September 28.
