Rethinking India’s Food Safety Framework

India’s food consumption is shifting toward processed items, escalating obesity and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) risks. Although production data signals changing habits, regulatory frameworks must evolve beyond basic hazard control to tackle misleading claims, enforcement gaps, and nutritional quality. Strengthening surveillance, front-of-pack labels, and state capacity are vital for an effective response.  

What does the Production Data Indicate on Consumption Pattern? 

A comparison of average organised-sector production during FY 2022-23 to FY 2025-26 with FY 2016-17 to FY 2019-20 reportedly shows: 

What Changes are Occurring in India’s Food Consumption Patterns? 

• Declining Share of Food in Total Household Expenditure: Food’s share in household expenditure is gradually declining in accordance with Engel’s Law, under which the proportion of income spent on food falls as income rises. In 2023-24, food accounted for approximately 47% of rural consumption expenditure and 40% of urban expenditure, while non-food items became dominant.  
• Shift Away from Cereal-Dominated Diets: The relative importance of rice, wheat and other cereals in household food budgets has declined substantially. Cereals and cereal substitutes accounted for only about 5% of total rural consumption expenditure in 2023-24, much less than processed food or milk products.  

  • However, cereals remain important nutritionally, providing about 46–47% of rural protein intake and nearly 40% of urban protein intake. 

• Growing Consumption of Milk and High-Value Protein Foods: Rising incomes and nutrition awareness are increasing demand for milk, curd, paneer, eggs, fish and meat. Milk and milk products accounted for more than 8% of total rural consumption expenditure and around 7% in urban India in 2023-24.  

  • Examples include the rapid penetration of packaged dairy products through cooperatives such as Amul and Nandini, growing poultry consumption and the expansion of organised meat and seafood markets.    

• Rapid Expansion of Processed and Packaged Food: Beverages, refreshments and processed food have become the largest component of the food expenditure basket, accounting for approximately 10% of rural Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure (MPCE) and 11% of urban MPCE. Demand has expanded for packaged snacks, biscuits, instant noodles, bakery products, sweetened beverages and ready-to-cook meals.    
• Rise of Convenience Food and Eating Outside the Home: Urbanisation, smaller families, longer commuting hours and changing work patterns have encouraged convenience-oriented consumption. Households increasingly purchase cooked meals, restaurant food, packaged refreshments and app-delivered food rather than preparing every meal at home.  

  • Platforms such as Swiggy and Zomato, cloud kitchens, workplace cafeterias and roadside food markets illustrate the growth of food-away-from-home consumption.   

• Premiumisation and Lifestyle Consumption: Wine, speciality coffee, cafés and premium desserts function partly as markers of aspiration and social identity, while digital media makes global food trends available rapidly to young consumers. This produces a transition from consumption based mainly on nutrition or habit to consumption shaped by identity, convenience, branding, social-media visibility, and experiential value.    
• Increasing Intake of Fats and Energy-Dense Foods: Indian diets are becoming more fat-intensive and calorie-dense, especially in urban areas. In 2023-24, average daily fat intake was approximately 60 grams per person in rural India and 70 grams in urban India, whereas average protein intake remained around 62–63 grams.  

  • Greater consumption of edible oils, fried food, processed snacks and sugar-sweetened beverages is creating a nutrition transition from calorie deficiency towards diet-related non-communicable diseases.    

• Counter-Trend Towards Healthy, Traditional and Sustainable Food: Alongside processed-food consumption, an increasingly health-conscious segment is turning towards millets, organic produce, low-sugar products, plant-based food and fortified staples.  

  • The promotion of millets as “Shree Anna,” fortified rice through welfare programmes, Eat Right India and local products through One District One Product has reinforced this trend. Urban demand for ragi, jowar, bajra, cold-pressed oils and traditional regional foods illustrates health-oriented and sustainable consumption.   
  • Buzzwords such as natural, multigrain, immunity boosting, no maida, no palm oil, sugar-free, and high protein signal a broader consumer shift toward healthy, and sustainable food. 

Why is Changing Food Consumption Pattern a Public-Health Concern? 

• Rising Obesity and Metabolic Disorders: Greater consumption of calorie-dense foods, combined with sedentary lifestyles, is creating an energy imbalance.  

  • According to NFHS-6 (2023-24), around 31% of women and 27% of men aged 15–49 years were overweight or obese—considerably higher than the previous survey.  
  • Obesity increases the risk of Type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, fatty-liver disease, joint problems and certain cancers, making it a major risk multiplier rather than merely a cosmetic concern.  

• Growth of Diet-Related Non-Communicable Diseases: Packaged snacks, instant food, restaurant meals and sugary beverages often contain excessive salt, free sugar, saturated fat and refined carbohydrates leading to NCDs. E.g., excess sodium raises blood pressure and increases the risk of heart and kidney disease.  

  • NCDs accounted for 55% of deaths in WHO’s South-East Asia Region in 2021, with nearly half occurring prematurely.   

• Harmful Alcohol Use: Alcohol is associated with liver disease, several cancers, road accidents, domestic violence, mental-health disorders, reduced productivity, and household impoverishment. Wine should not be presented as harmless merely because it has a lower alcohol concentration than spirits.    
• Tobacco burden: According to Global Adult Tobacco Survey-2, tobacco use among persons aged 15 years and above declined from 34.6% in 2009-10 to 28.6% in 2016-17. Yet this still represented approximately 26.7 crore users.  
  
• Double Burden of Malnutrition: India simultaneously faces undernutrition and overnutrition, sometimes within the same household. NFHS-6 reported that approximately 29% of children under five were stunted, even as adult obesity increased substantially.  

  • A low-income family may consume enough calories through refined cereals, fried food and cheap packaged snacks but still lack protein, iron, vitamins and other micronutrients. This creates hidden hunger, anaemia and impaired child development alongside obesity and diabetes.  

• Food Safety Risks from Expanding Outside-Food Consumption: inadequate hygiene, unsafe water, improper refrigeration, reused cooking oil and poor supply-chain traceability can cause food-borne illnesses. Common concerns include unregulated street food, adulterated dairy products and poorly stored meat.     
• Growing Health Inequality: Healthy food such as fruits, pulses, nuts and quality protein may be less affordable than calorie-dense packaged products, creating a nutrition–income paradox. Wealthier consumers can choose organic, low-sugar or protein-rich foods, while poorer households may depend on cheap refined carbohydrates and edible oils.  
• Public Health Expenditure Burden: Diet-related diseases subsequently increase household out-of-pocket expenditure, reduce worker productivity and impose long-term costs on the public-health system. Thus, unhealthy consumption reinforces both health inequality and intergenerational poverty.    

What Measures have been Taken to Strengthen Food Safety? 

• Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI): FSSAI is a statutory authority under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.  

  • Its functions include formulating standards and regulations; accrediting laboratories; regulating food imports; licensing food businesses; undertaking surveillance; providing scientific advice; promoting consumer awareness; and coordinating with State food-safety authorities.  
  • Enforcement is shared, as FSSAI sets national standards, while State governments and Union Territories undertake much of the inspection, sampling and prosecution. 

• Consumer Protection Act, 2019: The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) can act against misleading advertisements; false or deceptive representations; unfair trade practices; and endorsements lacking due diligence.  
  
• Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, 1954: It restricts advertisements claiming magical treatment for specified diseases. 
• Food Safety Training and Certification (FoSTaC): The FoSTaC programme trains food handlers and supervisors in hygiene and regulatory compliance. By August 2025, over 3 lakh street-food vendors had reportedly been trained. 
• Eat Right India: Eat Right India combines regulatory, capacity-building and behavioural interventions under three broad objectives: Eat Safe, Eat Healthy, and Eat Sustainable. Its programmes include Eat Right campuses, certified street-food hubs, hygiene rating; Eat Right schools; reduction of salt, sugar and fat; and consumer-awareness campaigns. 
• Reduction of Trans Fats: FSSAI limited industrial trans-fat content in fats and oils to not more than 2% by weight from January 2022. This aligned India with the WHO objective of eliminating industrially produced trans fats. 
• RUCO Initiative: Repurpose Used Cooking Oil seeks to prevent repeated frying and channel used cooking oil towards biodiesel production. 
• Digital Regulation: The Food Safety Compliance System, or FoSCoS, supports registration and licensing; compliance management; inspection; returns; and traceability of regulated food businesses. 

What are the Major Challenges in India’s Food-Safety and Nutrition Framework? 

• Weak Distinction Between Hazard and Nutrition: Regulation focuses mainly on acute hazards—such as adulterants, pathogens and contaminants—while giving comparatively less attention to the long-term effects of foods high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS). A product may meet safety standards yet contribute to obesity and diabetes when consumed regularly. 
• Inadequate Front-of-pack Information: Back-of-pack nutrition panels require literacy, numeracy, knowledge of serving sizes and time for comparison. The absence of simple and easily understood Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labelling (FOPNL) limits consumers’ ability to identify HFSS products. 
• Misleading Health and Nutrition Claims: Claims such as “natural,” “no maida,” “no palm oil,” “high-protein” and “immunity booster” may be technically correct but create a misleading “health halo”. A high-sugar or high-salt product may consequently appear healthy merely because it contains millet, protein or added vitamins. 
• Surrogate and Cross-media Advertising: Alcohol and tobacco brands may be indirectly promoted through soda, packaged water, music events, merchandise, influencer content and sports sponsorships.  

  • Different rules for television, cinema, streaming, social media, gaming and e-commerce allow marketing to migrate towards the least-regulated platforms. 

• Influencer Misinformation: Unqualified digital creators may promote extreme diets, unverified supplements, ingredient demonisation and false disease-prevention claims. Undisclosed paid endorsements and the absence of uniform evidence standards make it difficult for consumers to distinguish scientific dietary advice from commercial promotion. 
• Multiplicity of Regulators: Food, supplements, alcohol, tobacco, medicines and advertisements involve FSSAI, drug regulators, State excise departments, CCPA, MeitY, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and local bodies. Overlapping jurisdictions create enforcement gaps and enable regulatory arbitrage, particularly for nutraceuticals, energy drinks and brand extensions. 

What Steps Should be Taken to Strengthen India’s Food and Public-Health Framework?   

• Build a National Consumption-surveillance System: India should integrate Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) data, retail and GST information, production and trade statistics, nutrition surveys, disease surveillance, prescription data, and representative dietary-intake surveys into a comprehensive database.  

  • This information should culminate in a regularly published National Food Consumption and Nutrition Report that clearly distinguishes between production, availability, expenditure, and actual intake. 

• Introduce Clear Front-of-pack Nutrition Labels: A mandatory front label should effectively communicate excessive levels of added sugar, sodium, saturated fat, and industrial trans fat using a simple, visible, and standardised design. 

  • A product exceeding specified thresholds for sugar, salt or saturated fat should face restrictions on positive health claims, meaning it should not be marketed as healthy solely because it is made with millet, fortified, free from maida, free from palm oil, or labelled natural.  

• Strengthen Restrictions on Marketing to Children: India should proactively restrict advertisements for unhealthy food across children’s programming, in schools, through cartoon characters, in child-oriented games, via toys and collectible incentives, and by child influencers.  

  • Additionally, schools must actively create healthy food environments rather than relying solely on traditional nutritional education. 

• Create an Influencer Accountability Framework: Influencers making health or nutrition claims should prominently disclose commercial relationships, state relevant qualifications, cite credible evidence for medical claims, and avoid offering advice outside their professional competence.  

  • They must also retain records supporting their claims and face penalties for repeated deceptive promotion, while digital platforms maintain searchable advertisement libraries for high-risk products. 

• Support Product Reformulation: The government should establish progressive targets for reducing added sugar, sodium, saturated fat, and excessive portion sizes across the commercial food supply. Crucially, this reformulation must produce an absolute nutritional improvement rather than mere substitution with another poorly studied additive. 
• Improve State Enforcement Capacity: A robust national minimum capacity framework should prescribe clear norms for food safety officers, sampling, laboratory turnaround times, inspection frequencies, and digital case tracking. Central financial assistance must then be directly linked to addressing these capacity deficits and achieving measurable improvements in local enforcement. 
• Establish Representative Surveillance Sampling: Alongside routine risk-based enforcement, FSSAI should conduct statistically representative sampling to accurately estimate microbial contamination, pesticide and veterinary-drug residues, adulteration, heavy metals, labelling compliance, and misleading claims. The resulting data should be published in machine-readable form while rigorously protecting due process for firms. 
• Make Compliance Feasible for Small Vendors: Ensuring street-food safety requires providing essential infrastructure such as potable water, proper drainage, waste collection, hygienic vending zones, affordable storage, and shared refrigeration. These physical provisions must be paired with training in local languages and simple registration processes, as demonstrated by the success of certified street-food hubs. 

Conclusion  

India’s food economy is rapidly transitioning toward processed convenience foods and non-communicable diseases. Food safety must evolve beyond acute hazard control to regulate the entire commercial environment. Key measures include mandatory front-of-pack labeling, curbing influencer misinformation, supporting product reformulation, and strengthening State enforcement. Furthermore, public health policy requires clear, evidence-based communication rather than ingredient demonization to empower informed consumer choices.