The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India issued a draft notification to amend the Food Safety and Standards Regulations (Labelling & Display) Regulations, 2020. The regulations will now be called the Food Safety and Standards (Labelling & Display) Amendment Regulations, 2022, which will include the definitions of "Front-of-pack nutrition labelling" and "High fat, sugar, salt food", their manner of declaration and other additions.
These draft Food Safety and Standards (Labelling & Display) Amendment Regulations, 2022 shall be considered after the expiry of 60 days, from the date of publication. During this period, the FSSAI will consider objections/suggestions for the draft regulations which can be submitted by Food Business Operators & Industry Associations. These regulations define the concept of FOPNL and HFSS and the rules for their declaration. Front-of-pack nutrition labelling (FOPNL) is a form of supplementary nutrition information that presents simplified nutrition information on the front-of-pack of pre-packaged foods. High fat, sugar, salt (HFSS) food means a processed food product which has high levels of saturated fat or total sugar or sodium. The declared values of these ingredients are such that the product; does not satisfy the value of energy (kcal) from total sugar less than 10 percent of total energy, or from saturated fat 10 percent of total energy, and sodium less than 1 mg/1 kcal.” Chaper 6 is introduced in the regulations which is about Indian Nutrition Rating (INR) which has details of Baseline Reference values and Categories for which FOPNL would be applicable; Pictorial Display Format; Generation of INR logo and its size. The INR system rates the overall nutritional profile for packaged food by assigning it a rating from ½ star (least healthy) to 5 stars (healthiest). More stars indicate that the food product is better positioned to provide for daily human need of nutrients. Schedule III has Baseline reference values & points for different foods; Formula to Calculate Star Rating Schedule IV has the list of all categories that are exempted from FOPNL. In addition to all this, the declaration of Dietary Fiber shall be made mandatory in the nutritional profile.