FSSAI tells the Supreme Court it now wants red hexagon warnings on junk food

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India told the Supreme Court on Friday that it now wants a red hexagonal warning on the front of packaged food that is high in two or more of fat, sugar or salt. Reuters first reported the filing. The text has not been posted on the court website.

The draft mark would read HIGH FAT, HIGH SUGAR, HIGH SALT, or HIGHLY SWEETENED BEVERAGE, depending on what the product contains. FSSAI wrote that the point is to let buyers "readily identify products high in the specified nutrients," with children named as a group the rule is meant to help.

That is a reversal. Earlier this month the same regulator told the court that colour warnings were a poor fit for Indian food because the cuisine is more intense than Western diets. It offered a black-and-white table of numbers instead. The Supreme Court had already told the government to move faster after health petitioners challenged the delay.

How the earlier plan died

Reuters reported this week that FSSAI dropped interpretive labels after a March meeting with industry executives. Recordings from that meeting, reviewed by the agency, show company officials calling colour warnings confusing and asking the regulator to stress portion size instead. Coca-Cola and Nestle already print similar marks in several European markets. They had not agreed to the same treatment on Indian packs.

The government has tried to write a front-of-pack rule for about a decade. A 2022 draft sat in the gazette process. Labelling amendment regulations notified on 24 March 2026, with a 1 July 2027 start date, did not install the red hexagon now described to the court. After the Reuters story on the March meeting, buyers and public-health groups attacked the climbdown on social media. The Friday filing arrived in that climate.

Nestle chief executive Philipp Navratil said this week that any rule should be written "scientifically" and with companies in the room. He pointed to portion size and "global best practices." The court file does not say whether FSSAI accepted that framing. It does say the warning should appear when two or more listed nutrients are high, which is stricter than a single-nutrient flag and weaker than a system that marks every high nutrient on its own.

What still has to be written

Thresholds are the real fight. FSSAI has discussed putting products into five bands by typical serving size, then setting high-fat, high-sugar and high-salt lines inside each band. Canada's pictorial warnings and Israel's red-and-green marks are the models officials keep naming. None of those numbers are in the Friday summary that Reuters saw.

The packaged-food market in India is worth more than $100 billion on the Reuters figure. A red hexagon on two-nutrient products would hit sweetened drinks, many snacks and a large share of instant foods. Companies that already print traffic-light or warning marks abroad would have to run a separate Indian artwork line if the thresholds differ from the EU or UK rules they already follow.

A Lancet projection cited in the Indian debate puts 45 crore people at risk of overweight or obesity by 2050 if current diets hold. That number is a model, not a measurement of this week's shelves. What the court can measure is time. The bench has already linked food labelling to Article 21 and warned it may issue further directions if the government stalls again.

The next hearing will decide if this is policy or a brief

A filing in a pending case is not a gazette notification. FSSAI can still change the shape, the colour, the nutrient list or the start date when it writes the actual regulation. Industry can still argue that serving size, not a hexagon, should carry the message. Petitioners can still say the two-nutrient trigger lets a drink that is only high in sugar escape the red mark.

Until a draft hits the Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations with dates and milligram lines, Friday's document is a position in court. It is also the first time in this cycle that the regulator has put the words HIGH FAT, HIGH SUGAR and HIGH SALT back on paper after saying colour warnings would not work in India.