FSSAI tells the Supreme Court it wants red hexagons on high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt packs

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India told the Supreme Court on Friday that it now proposes red hexagonal warning labels on the front of packaged foods that are high in fat, sugar or salt. The six-page compliance affidavit, seen by Reuters and summarised by LiveLaw, reverses a position the regulator had taken earlier this year after meetings with industry. A bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran had given the Centre two weeks to act, saying public health could not wait.

Under the draft, a red hexagon would appear when a product is high in any two or more of three listed nutrients: added saturated fat, added sugar and salt. The thresholds would be taken from the Dietary Guidelines for Indians, 2024, issued by the ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition. The label would carry the matching words: High Fat, High Sugar, High Salt, and, for drinks, Highly Sweetened Beverage. The warning type would be one point larger than the font in the back-of-pack nutrition table.

How India got to a red hexagon

Colour-coded interpretive labels have been on FSSAI's desk since 2017. The idea is simple: a shopper should not have to turn a packet around and do arithmetic. Chile, Mexico and several other countries already use black octagons or similar marks. India stayed with a back-of-pack table and occasional health claims. Reuters reported this week that the government dropped a stronger warning plan after companies privately objected, and that firms such as Coca-Cola and Nestle already print similar marks in European markets. After that report circulated, the regulator's tone in court changed.

The case is a public interest petition by the NGOs 3S and Our HEALTH Society, argued by Rajiv Shankar Dvivedi. The petitioners want mandatory front-of-pack warnings on products high in salt, sugar, saturated fat and calories, with children named as the group most exposed to advertising. The court had already said it was unimpressed by the work done so far. Friday's affidavit is the government's attempt to show a concrete design before the two-week clock runs out.

What the design does not yet settle

A proposal in an affidavit is not a notified regulation. FSSAI still has to publish draft rules, take comments, fix the exact nutrient cut-offs in grams per 100 grams or per serving, and set a compliance date. Serving size games are how companies have blunted labels elsewhere. The affidavit, as described, triggers the hexagon when two of the three nutrients are high. A drink that is only high in sugar, or a snack that is only high in salt, might escape the red mark if that reading of the text holds. That gap will be argued.

Enforcement is the other hole. India already struggles to keep basic ingredient lists honest. A new symbol on the front of a pack is useful only if inspectors pull products that omit it and if e-commerce listings show the same mark. The affidavit says the aim is a simple, prominent warning, especially for children and other vulnerable groups. That sentence is the policy. The regulation will be judged by whether a parent in a kirana shop can see the hexagon without turning the pack around.

The next hearing will show whether the bench treats Friday's filing as compliance or as another sketch. Until a gazette notification appears, the red hexagon exists only on paper in a Supreme Court file. Packaged food on Indian shelves still carries the old table on the back.