NEW DELHI: In a move aimed at helping consumers make informed choices, India’s apex food safety regulator has proposed making it mandatory to display red colour coding on front-of-the-pack labels on packaged food products with high fat, sugar or salt levels.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has also proposed that a declaration be made on the label if the food product has five per cent or more of ingredients that are genetically engineered or modified.
The proposed draft Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2018 are now in the public domain for suggestions and feedback before they are notified.
The regulations say that food company will need to declare nutritional information such as calories, total fat, trans-fat, total sugar and salt per serving on the front of the pack.
However, FSSAI has suggested that in case of packaged food products containing high levels of fat, salt and sugar, the percentages of dietary energy values be highlighted in red colour on the labels.
In some developed countries, colour coding is used to let consumers decide if they want to have potentially unhealthy food.