The matter surrounding Front of Pack Labelling of food products has reached the Prime Minister’s Office after a nutritional advocacy group addressed a letter to PM Narendra Modi requesting him to look into the matter.
Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest in India (NAPi) has written a letter to the Prime Minister seeking his intervention on a decision taken by FSSAI in a meeting of Stakeholders on Front of Pack Labelling (FoPL) to accept Health Star Rating (HSR) as its method of FoPL.
In its letter to PM, NAPi requested, “We urge you (PM) to intervene using your highest office, to change the ‘decision’ taken by FSSAI.”
According to the report – looking at the particular effect to detect the presence of excess of unwanted nutrients, warning labels are way ahead of the Health Star Rating (HSR). It is evident that warning labels have more consistent good performance. But the recommendation of HSR as the preferred choice, which does not even let the consumer understand the health risk, is therefore questionable.
NAPi has proposed that the Govt. should frame a parliamentary law to curb the rise of consumption of unhealthy foods, which would include a restriction on aggressive marketing as a first step. The FoPL nutrition warning system should be deployed promptly and made mandatory based on WHO Standards. Moreover, an educational campaign for consumers to understand what unhealthy foods are should be implemented along with the higher GST rates on unhealthy foods.
It is worth mentioning that the FSSAI had commissioned a study by IIM Ahmedabad on the subject of Front of Pack Labelling. Earlier, IIM-A had submitted the study report along with several recommendations, including Health Star Ratings for food products.