FSSAI issued draft regulations for color coding of sugar and salty foods

New Delhi, 29 June (KNN) The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued draft regulations to directive packaged food companies to label high fat, sugar and salt contents in front of the package in red-color-coding.

FSSAI said the new regulations also propose to make it "mandatory to display red color-coding on front-of-the-pack labels on packaged food products that have high-fat, high-sugar and high-salt content levels."

This requirement would be implemented in phased manner for a period of three years.

FSSAI said that its new ‘Labeling and Display’ regulations are ready for draft notification. These regulations will supersede the Food Safety and Standards (Packaging and Labeling) Regulations, 2011.

The regulator noted that food labeling serves as a primary link of communication between the manufacturer and consumer and covers both food safety and information of consumer interest.

To make the national labeling regulations more robust and effective, FSSAI is in the process of comprehensive revision of Food Safety and Standards (Packaging and Labeling) Regulations, 2011 with the objective of having three different regulations dealing separately to packaging, labeling and advertisement & claims requirements.

The packaged food companies will need to declare nutritional information such as calories (energy), saturated fat, trans-fat, added sugar and sodium per serve on the front of the pack.

The statement also said, "In present time, the industry practice is to put manufacturing date and expiry date at two different places over the pack and it became difficult for consumer to see both at a glance. Hence, the new regulations propose that Date Marking including date of manufacturing and date of expiry must be at one place."

Two regulations namely FSS (Packaging) Regulations and FSS (Advertising and Claims) Regulations have been finalized and notified in the year 2018.

Now the FSSAI has readied 'Labeling and Display' regulations for draft notification.