Public health experts demand clear warning labels on packaged food

Bengaluru: The Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI), a 30-years-old NGO working towards protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding and child nutrition, in association with Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest in India (NAPi), a national think tank on public nutrition, organized a webinar on "Warning Labels or : Health Star Rating (HSR) on Unhealthy Food Products: What Should India Choose." More than 200 public health and nutrition advocates participated. The webinar was co-chaired by Dr. Ashwani Mahajan (National Co-Convener of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch) and Dr.Vandana Shiva of Navdanya.

The convener of NAPi, Dr. Arun Gupta welcomed the ongoing work of NITI Aayog and FSSAI towards the goal of reducing consumption of unhealthy foods in order to check the menace of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, cancers, hypertension and heart disease. Dr Gupta said, Industry loves the HSR because it does not reflect the nutrients of concern, misleads people who think that food products are healthy because of stars and aggressive marketing tactics. Packaged food products are usually projected as healthy using HSR as they receive ½ to 5 'Stars', which give an impression of being good and more stars means healthy, which is misleading. This way consumption of substantially unhealthy food could increase and defeat the very objective for which FOPL is being designed. HSR can be confusing for consumers, if packaged food labels show any 'health claim' by using positive nutrients.

He further mention that in a recent meeting of the Stakeholders on Front of Pack Labelling, FSSAI on 15 February 2022 has made a decision to include 'Health Star Rating (HSR)' in the draft regulation based on a study conducted by IIM Ahmedabad that recommends HSR as the FOPL for India.

The bottom-line results of the IIM A study indicates, "For the group with a healthy prime warning labels and HSR produce the same effect on purchase of chips and biscuits with warning labels being marginally ahead in terms of reducing purchase intention". And for the group with an unhealthy prime and with those with no prime warning labels are ahead of HSR. Looking at the particular effect to detect presence of excess of unwanted nutrients, warning labels are way ahead of the HSR. According to the report, 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.

Experts from Australia Mark Lawrence, Professor of Public Health Nutrition at the Institute for Physical Activity (using HSR), and Marcela Reyes Jedlicki, Assistant Professor, Center for Research from Chile (Using Warning Label) also shared their experience in the webinar.