Flaws in food regulations cause obesity.

• India’s obesity crisis is a policy failure, with one in four adults being obese and one in four adults being either diabetic or pre-diabetic.
• The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has failed to implement the labelling or advertising regulations planned in 2017.
• The Indian Nutrition Rating system, proposed in September 2022, is flawed as it can mislead consumers by creating a health halo on all pre-packaged unhealthy food products.
• The system allows foods high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) and UPFs to flaunt two stars on the packet when they might otherwise have four warning signals.
• The Consumer Protection Act, 2019, defines’misleading’ any product or service that deliberately conceals important information. FSSAI does not agree, and FSS regulations do not specify that nutritional information of a food product must be provided in the advertisement.
• The result is continued freedom to advertise unhealthy addictive food products across media, putting people at risk of obesity and diabetes.
• The Economic Survey demands stringent front-of-pack labels and stricter marketing curbs. To achieve this, India needs to scrap the Indian Nutrition Rating system and adopt warning labels.
• Advertising loopholes need to be closed through the amendment of existing laws or the enactment of a new one harmonising all laws under a unified UPF/HFSS advertisement ban.
• The government could consider launching a campaign on the risks of UPFs in all languages.