FSSAI wants red warning labels on high-fat, high-sugar, and high-salt packaged foods. HUL says it will comply. The phased rollout timeline is still pending.
FSSAI's proposed front-of-pack nutrition labelling (FoPNL) regulation would require a prominent red warning label on any packaged food product that exceeds defined thresholds for added saturated fat, sugar, or salt, according to an affidavit the regulator filed before the Supreme Court of India in August 2026.
Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL), India's largest fast-moving consumer goods company by revenue, became the first major food conglomerate to publicly endorse the proposal. Speaking at a post-earnings press briefing on 29 October 2026, HUL Managing Director and CEO Priya Nair said the company is "very well placed" to meet the new norms and will "simply comply with the regulation." HUL's food and beverage brands include Kissan jams and ketchups, Knorr soups and seasonings, Hellmann's mayonnaise, Horlicks, and Boost. The endorsement matters because HUL's scale means its compliance posture tends to pull smaller contract manufacturers and private-label suppliers in the same direction.
What changed
India has had mandatory nutritional information on the back of packs since the Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020, but those rules require no front-of-pack signal for high-risk nutrients. The proposed FoPNL regulation changes that in three ways.
First, the warning must appear on the front of the pack, not buried in a nutrition table. Second, it must use a red colour, which research from Chile, Mexico, and Brazil consistently links to faster consumer recognition than traffic-light or star-rating systems. Third, the font size for the warning text must be one point larger than the font used in the nutrition information table on the back of the pack, making it harder to minimise through design choices.
The specific declarations the label must carry are: "High Fat", "High Sugar", "High Salt", and "Highly Sweetened Beverage", applied individually or in combination depending on the product's nutrient profile.
FSSAI told the Supreme Court it plans a phased rollout to give industry time for product reformulation and to allow consumer education campaigns to run alongside. The threshold values that will trigger each warning, and the phase-wise dates, have not been published in a gazette notification as of 30 October 2026. FSSAI's affidavit to the Supreme Court is the most detailed public document available, and it stops short of specifying those numbers.
The Supreme Court case itself is significant context. The petition before the court has pushed FSSAI to move faster than it might have on its own. A 2024 report by the Centre for Science and Environment found that a large share of popular Indian packaged snacks, instant noodles, and flavoured beverages would qualify as high in at least one nutrient of concern under nutrient profiling models used by WHO's South-East Asia Region office. FSSAI has not confirmed which nutrient profiling model it will adopt for the Indian thresholds.
What buyers and cooks should do now
The regulation is not yet in force, so no product on shelves today is required to carry a red FoPNL warning. That means the absence of a warning label tells you nothing useful at this stage.
Until the thresholds are gazetted, the back-of-pack nutrition table is still the most reliable tool available. For packaged snacks, look at the per-100 g column rather than the per-serving column, because serving sizes are set by manufacturers and are frequently smaller than what people actually eat. WHO's interim benchmarks for high-sodium foods (more than 600 mg sodium per 100 g for most snack categories) and high-sugar foods (more than 10 g total sugars per 100 g) are a reasonable proxy while India's own thresholds are pending.
For home cooks and clean-label shoppers, the practical implication of this regulation is about reformulation pressure, not just labelling. When a red warning label is mandatory, brands face a commercial incentive to reduce fat, sugar, or salt to fall below the threshold and avoid the label. That is exactly what happened in Chile after its 2016 FoPNL law: a 2021 study in PLOS Medicine found measurable reductions in sugar and sodium content across several food categories within three years of implementation. Whether Indian manufacturers will reformulate or simply accept the label is an open question, and one worth watching across HUL's own portfolio given that Horlicks and Boost are malt-based nutrition drinks with significant added sugar.
If you buy products from brands like Slurrp Farm (Wholsum Foods), Yoga Bar (ITC), or True Elements (Maverix Wellness), which market themselves on cleaner ingredient lists, check whether their products would clear the forthcoming thresholds. Several "healthy" snack brands use ingredients like maltodextrin (a partially hydrolyzed starch with a glycemic index comparable to table sugar), fruit juice concentrates, or palm-based fats that could push a product over a fat or sugar threshold even without obvious junk-food ingredients.
FSSAI's website (fssai.gov.in) is where the gazette notification will appear when it is finalised. Subscribing to FSSAI's public notices page is the fastest way to catch the threshold values and phase-one deadline when they drop. Until then, treat any brand claim of "no warning label required" as premature.