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SC pushes for warning labels on packaged foods: How the world does it, and do they help people make healthier choices?
From EU’s Nutri-Score to Chile's octagons — a guide to how front-of-pack labels work globally, as Supreme Court pushes FSSAI to take a decision.
The Supreme Court has given the Centre and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) two weeks to take a call on front-of-pack warning labels for packaged food, or face directions from the court itself.
A bench of justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran delivered the deadline on August 13, during a hearing on a public interest litigation filed by non-profits 3S and Our Health Society. "You don't want people of this country to remain healthy? More particularly, growing children?" the bench asked.
The court had earlier directed FSSAI to consider front-of-pack warnings in a February 2026 order and this month's hearing found it visibly unconvinced by the regulator's hesitation since then.
The court was careful to frame its concern narrowly, saying that the issue was not of banning any food, but ensuring that nutritional information is easy to understand before a product is bought by a consumer.
Additional Solicitor General Brijender Chahar argued that traditional Indian foods could end up with warning symbols under the proposed thresholds. He added that this could create knock-on effects for micro, small, and medium enterprises. However, the bench pushed back, stating: “We only want the person purchasing it to know what he is consuming.”
What the court is asking for
Front-of-pack labelling (FoPL) puts a simplified nutrition signal on the front of a package, sparing consumers the effort of turning it over and interpreting a detailed nutrition table.
India has debated which version to adopt for years. FSSAI's own proposal — an Indian Nutrition Rating running from 0.5 to 5 stars, weighing energy, sugar, salt, saturated fat, protein and fibre — drew more than 14,000 public comments and was reviewed by an expert committee, according to the affidavit FSSAI had filed with the court.
The discussions did not reach consensus, and the INR proposal was deferred.
FSSAI’s latest affidavit, filed on August 3, pointed to a different approach: a nutrition table showing government-recommended daily limits for added sugar, saturated fat and salt alongside per-100g nutrient content. This was a departure from both the star rating and the warning symbols the court has pushed for.
Also read: FSSAI cracks down on misleading food and alcohol claims; Dabur Honey, Old Monk and more banned
How front-of-pack systems differ
Nutrition researchers, including the Bengaluru-based consultancy Food Safety Works, group front-of-pack systems into three broad types.
Non-interpretive systems hand over numbers without judgement. The UK's Reference Intake benchmarks calories and nutrients against a 2,000 kcal daily target, while the US food industry's voluntary Facts Up Front label does something similar for calories, saturated fat, sodium and sugars.
Interpretive systems go further and tell consumers what the numbers mean. Nutri-Score, used across several European countries, grades products from A (dark green) to E (dark orange) using an algorithm that assigns positive points for fruit, vegetables, pulses, fibre and protein, and negative points for energy, saturated fat, sugar and salt. The final tally determines the letter grade.
Warning-label systems take a narrower approach, skipping the overall grade and flagging only when a product crosses a defined threshold for a nutrient of concern — a "HIGH IN" tag for sugar or sodium, for instance. Chile uses black octagonal warnings for this purpose, covering sugar, sodium, saturated fat and calories.
Hybrid systems combine both. Australia and New Zealand's Health Star Rating gives products an overall score from 0.5 to 5 stars, built from the same negative components (energy, saturated fat, sodium, sugar) weighed against positive ones (protein, fibre, the proportion of fruit, vegetables, nuts and legumes). The system recommends comparing similar products against each other — a yoghurt against another yoghurt — rather than judging a diet as a whole.
Traffic-light labelling, red for high, yellow for medium, green for low, is a simpler variant of the same concept.
How other countries have approached it
The United States has relied on a standardised Nutrition Facts panel since 1994, overhauled in 2016 to reflect realistic serving sizes, separate added sugars from total sugars, and highlight vitamin D, calcium, iron and potassium.
The country is now also moving towards the front of the pack model. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January 2025 proposed a rule for a simplified box showing low, medium or high levels of saturated fat, sodium and added sugars, but a final regulation is still pending.
The European Union has no single mandatory system, leaving labelling voluntary across member states. According to Brussels-based food regulatory consultancy Castle Group EU, Nutri-Score is the dominant model in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. However, producers of traditional cheese, olive oil, and cured meats have strongly resisted it, as fat- or salt-heavy products score poorly regardless of cultural context.
China has taken a different route altogether, combining national labelling standards with public-health messaging and digital labels rather than a single front-of-pack format, according to a March 2025 report by Keller and Heckman, a firm specialising in food and drug regulatory law.
Revised standards released that same month, and effective from March 2027, expand mandatory labelling to include sugars and saturated fat, alongside a caution that children and adolescents should limit salt, oil and sugar intake.
Japan has opted for a voluntary model. On February 26, its Consumer Affairs Agency published guidelines for a standardized front-of-pack display covering energy, protein, fat, carbohydrates, and salt equivalent per serving. It also includes percentages based on Japanese dietary reference values, serving to supplement rather than replace the mandatory nutrition panel.
Does any of this change what people buy?
The premise behind all of it is that information only helps if people can use it quickly. A Food Safety Works survey found that 48.7% of shoppers only sometimes checked nutrition facts on packaged food. Even among those who did, 64.8% looked at calories, the report said, noting that interpreting the broader healthiness of a product tends to be slow and difficult.
Format appears to matter more than the mere presence of information. In virtual shopping tests reported by Packaging Digest in May, University of California researchers surveyed over 13,000 US adults to compare label designs. They found that multiple "high in" labels, flagging sodium and added sugar separately, helped shoppers identify healthier options far more reliably than the FDA's proposed design.
The same research flagged a risk with more complex formats, that is, a product carrying two "low" indicators alongside one "high" indicator could still be perceived as healthy overall, a distortion researchers call the health halo.
Also read:New food labels: What your snack won’t be able to hide anymore
Labels also appear to shape what manufacturers make, not just what consumers pick.
A review of Chile's mandatory warning labels, published in the journal Obesity Reviews in June 2026, found that the labels cut purchases of high-calorie, high-sugar and high-sodium products, sugary drinks especially. They also pushed manufacturers to reformulate their drinks, dairy products and preserves to contain less sugar and salt.
The same review noted fewer unhealthy items on sale in school kiosks and a drop in sugary-drink purchases, though it cautioned that warning labels on their own do little to narrow the gap in sugar consumption between wealthier and poorer households.
A label’s purpose is to make that trade-off visible at the moment someone decides what to buy — it can't stop the purchase, and it can't determine what counts as a healthy diet for any one person. The question before the Centre and FSSAI is not merely on whether food packets should carry more information, but also which kind of information is clear enough to guide a choice.
