New Delhi, The Supreme Court has asked the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, which has proposed phased implementation of front-of-package labelling on packaged foods, to come up with more clarifications on the planned labels of “nutrients of concern”, fat, sugar and salt.
The top court was hearing a plea of the public charitable trust ‘3S and Our Health Society’ which sought directions to the Centre, states and Union territories to implement mandatory FoPL on packaged foods. “Ideally, an all-inclusive FoPL which effectively caters to the diverse population of this country should incorporate a combination of words along with pictorial representations of the individual nutrients-of-concern. The matter has been posted for hearing on September 28. The court said the FSSAI should file its affidavit to the clarification sought in 10 days.
“In connection with this, we would like the Union to respond on how schools plan to incorporate through curriculum, initiatives, workshops etc, the manner in which information provided in packaged food items, including nutritional information, FoPL etc., must be interpreted, and other aspects relating to nutritional literacy,” according to the court order uploaded late night. The FSSAI had earlier told the top court that it proposed to provide a prominent front-of-pack warning label in red for food products high in added saturated fat, added sugar and salt. This would ensure that the information provided in the FoPL is truly accessible,” the top court said.
A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran on Thursday also asked the Centre how it plans to increase nutritional literacy in schools while flagging that children are under acute risk of developing unhealthy eating behaviours.
