That answer lands at a delicate moment. In August, FSSAI dropped plans to mandate colour-coded interpretive warning labels on the front of packaged foods, the kind that flag high sugar in red, and proposed a muted black-and-white table of sugar, salt and fat content instead. Its reasoning: Indian cuisine’s intense flavours make global labelling standards a poor fit. The decision is now before the Supreme Court, which took it up after public health activists petitioned. The stakes are stark. A recent study in The Lancet found up to 450 million Indians could be overweight or obese by 2050, and roughly 20 countries have already adopted the very front-of-pack labels that India hasn’t looked at, according to a Reuters investigation.
