Let's know what we eat: The type of front-of-pack labels consumers actually need

Walk into any supermarket and pick up a packet of biscuits, cereal or chips. Front-of-pack labelling (FOPL) is a masterclass in communication: attractive colours, catchy claims, endorsements, photographs, and promises of health, energy or goodness. But nutritional reality is usually relegated to a small table on the back. That asymmetry needs to change.

The debate over FOPL has gained urgency after an investigative report said that India's efforts to introduce prominent warnings for products high in sugar, salt and fat faced opposition from sections of the food and beverage industry. The industry has since said India should consult companies while framing new FOPL rules.

Industry should be consulted. Manufacturers understand formulations, supply chains, packaging constraints and consumer behaviour, and their inputs can improve implementation. But consultation cannot become a veto. The key purpose of food labelling is not to protect the packet's appearance. It is to protect the consumer's right to make an informed choice.


India is witnessing a rapid nutrition transition. The country continues to deal with undernutrition while facing an expanding burden of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Against this background, requiring consumers to decipher percentages, serving sizes, and grams of sugar and mg of sodium from a dense nutrition panel is inadequate.

There is an important distinction between providing information and making information understandable. Existing nutrition tables may satisfy the first test. Effective FOPL satisfies the second. A person buying breakfast cereal should not need a degree in nutrition to work out whether it is unusually high in sugar.

WHO describes FOPL as an important policy tool to help consumers make healthier food choices. It recommends that governments introduce nutrition declarations and supplement them with FOP information that is convenient, relevant and readily understood. It also points to another important benefit: well-designed labelling can encourage manufacturers to reformulate products. That second effect is often underestimated.

The biggest benefit of a strong labelling regime may eventually come not from consumers rejecting products but from manufacturers changing them. If a visible label tells consumers that one product has significantly more sugar or salt than another, competition begins to work in favour of public health. Companies have an incentive to innovate, reduce undesirable ingredients and improve their nutritional profile. The market then becomes part of the solution.

Consistency is also a question. Nestle says it has implemented Nutri-Score on thousands of products across continental Europe. Nutri-Score uses a simple 5-colour scale from A to E to help consumers compare nutritional quality. Such labelling helps people make informed choices and encourages the company to improve the nutritional value of its products.

This makes the Indian debate difficult to explain. If an easily understandable nutritional label helps consumers in France, Germany or Belgium make informed choices, why should an Indian consumer be expected to manage with less?

This is not an argument for mechanically importing a European system. India's food habits, dietary patterns, literacy levels and market structure are different. We need a system designed for India. The debate should not be reduced to whether India must adopt a particular colour, symbol or scoring methodology. There are legitimate scientific questions around nutrient thresholds and portion sizes, and whether labels should provide warnings or comparative scores. These questions should be settled through evidence.

FSSAI should commission transparent consumer-testing across regions, languages, income groups and education levels. Nutrition scientists, public-health experts, consumer organisations and industry should participate. The scientific basis for thresholds should be published. The selected label should then be simple enough for an ordinary consumer to understand instantly. The final system must also be mandatory.

Voluntary labelling inevitably creates an adverse-selection problem. Companies with healthier products have an incentive to display favourable information. Those with products high in sugar, salt or saturated fat may have precisely the opposite incentive.

A common standard creates a level playing field.

Industry concerns about transition costs are legitimate and can be addressed through reasonable implementation timelines. Smaller manufacturers may require greater flexibility and technical support. Regulation should always be proportionate. But the principle itself should not be compromised.

Indeed, FOPL should not be viewed as anti-industry. India's food-processing sector is one of the country's important growth opportunities. Stronger consumer standards can increase trust, encourage innovation and push Indian companies towards products that can compete globally. Consumers, meanwhile, remain free to choose.

India has spent years strengthening consumer empowerment through better disclosure, digital access and more competitive markets. Food cannot remain an exception. The front of a food package today is some of the most valuable advertising real estate in the consumer economy. Almost every centimetre is carefully designed to influence the purchasing decision.

It is reasonable to reserve a small part of that space for the truth about what is inside. FOP cannot belong entirely to marketing. Some of it must belong to the consumer, too.