FSSAI's red hexagon warning label: what is proposed, and when

India has no mandatory front-of-pack warning yet, but it now has a concrete proposal. FSSAI wants a red hexagon on a white square, top left of the front of the pack, reading HIGH FAT, HIGH SUGAR, HIGH SALT or HIGHLY SWEETENED BEVERAGE. On 23 September 2026 it told the Supreme Court it would bring this in as a single phase, covering any packaged food high in even one of those nutrients. The court hears the matter again on 28 September 2026.

This page sets out what is proposed, how the thresholds work, how to check a pack against them yourself, and how a 0–100 score relates.

What FSSAI has proposed

• The symbol. One red hexagon on a white square, placed prominently at the top left of the front. If more than one nutrient is high, they are named together inside the same symbol rather than in separate icons. The text must be at least one point larger than the nutrition table on the back.
• What triggers it. A food high in any one of the nutrients of concern — added sugar, added fat and salt — or a specified sweetened beverage: carbonated and non-carbonated water-based drinks, fruit drinks, fruit syrups and sharbats, caffeinated drinks and other specified fruit-based drinks.
• The yardstick. Thresholds based on the Dietary Guidelines for Indians, 2024, from ICMR-NIN, and applied whether a food is minimally or highly processed. In the affidavit's words, nutrition and processing are distinct concepts.
• What is exempt. Single-ingredient foods and foods that are inherently rich in fat, sugar or salt. The August affidavit names ghee, edible oil, salt, sugar, jaggery and honey.

Some reports describe the fat as saturated fat. The affidavit, as quoted, says FSSAI prefers added sugar and added fat to total sugar and saturated fat, as the more informative choice for a shopper. Trans fat is left out of the fat calculation because it already has its own limit and disclosure rule.

How the thresholds work

The proposed limits are a share of the food's energy, not grams per 100 g. As reported from the affidavit:

• Solid foods: added sugar at about 5% of energy, with total sugar not above 10%.
• Drinks: added sugar at about 10% of energy, total sugar not above 30%.
• Fat: added fat at about 15% of energy, with total fat not above 30%.

No salt figure for the front-of-pack rule has been reported. For comparison, FSSAI's separate August 2026 draft for food sold to children in schools, which drew on the same ICMR-NIN guidelines, used more than 0.625 g of salt per 100 g for solid foods. Whether the front-of-pack rule uses the same line is not yet public, and none of these numbers is final.

Check a pack against the proposal yourself

Because the limits are shares of energy, a pack has to be converted before it can be compared. Sugar carries about 4 kcal per gram and fat about 9, so:

• Sugar share = grams of sugar × 4 ÷ kcal per 100 g
• Fat share = grams of fat × 9 ÷ kcal per 100 g
• Salt = sodium in mg ÷ 400, in grams per 100 g

Worked through on a namkeen mixture from the labels we have read, per 100 g:

Against the lines as reported, the sugar is far below the limit for solid foods (2% against 10%), and since added sugar cannot exceed total sugar, it is below the added-sugar line too. The fat is above the total-fat line (50% against 30%) and the salt above the schools draft's line (1.7 g against 0.625 g). That still stops short of a verdict: the proposal's fat test is added fat, and the mandatory nutrition table has no added-fat row, so that test cannot be run from any label. How the final regulation measures it is one of the things the court has asked FSSAI to settle.

The timeline so far

• September 2022: a star-rating scheme, the Indian Nutrition Rating, is drafted. It draws more than 14,000 public comments and is never notified.
• February 2026: the Supreme Court asks for front-of-pack labelling; in March FSSAI asks for more time.
• 28 August 2026: FSSAI files an affidavit proposing the red hexagon in two phases — products high in two or more nutrients first, a single nutrient later.
• 10 September 2026: the court questions the phasing, asks why the label cannot be mandatory from the start, and seeks clarity on 13 points, among them the thresholds and the design.
• 23 September 2026: FSSAI's compliance affidavit moves to a single phase. It asks for about four months to issue and finalise the draft regulations, and proposes that companies get 365 days to comply voluntarily once the final regulation is notified.
• 28 September 2026: the next hearing.

Why it took four years to get here

The public record shows a genuine design disagreement rather than simple delay. A star rating lets a manufacturer improve a score by adding a positive — fortifying with protein or fibre — while leaving the sugar unchanged. A warning label cannot be gamed that way, but it is blunt, and it labels the food rather than describing it.

There is also a scale problem specific to India. A large share of packaged food sold here sits in a narrow nutritional range, so a scheme calibrated abroad can compress most products into one or two ratings and stop distinguishing anything. That is not hypothetical: it is the same failure we measured when we tested European cut-offs against Indian packs.

How the systems compare

Four schemes, four shapes, and it is worth being precise about what each one actually says.

• Warning labels (Chile, Mexico, Peru, Israel): one symbol per problem — high in sugar, high in sodium. Not a summary; a flag per nutrient. This is the family FSSAI's red hexagon belongs to.
• Indian Nutrition Rating (2022 draft): 0.5 to 5 stars. A summary rating, more is better, one symbol. Never notified.
• Nutri-Score (Europe): A to E with colours. A summary grade computed from a point system, calibrated on European diets.
• Health Star Rating (Australia and New Zealand): 0.5 to 5 stars, the model the 2022 Indian draft most resembled.

The important split is between summary schemes and warning schemes. A summary answers "how good is this overall". A warning answers "what specifically is wrong with this". They are different questions and a shopper often wants the second.

How a LabelSaaf score relates

A LabelSaaf score is a summary scheme in shape — 0 to 100, in five bands — with the warning-scheme information kept alongside rather than replaced by it. The verdict names the nutrient that moved the score and prints its figure, so the pack gets both a rating and the specific reason.

The point ladders come from Nutri-Score 2023, which is the best-studied of the summary systems. The band cut-offs do not: applied unchanged to Indian packs, European cut-offs ran a mean signed error of −18.4 against packs we scored by hand, put 33.8% of a large Indian sample into the bottom band, and made the top band unreachable for all 553 beverages in it. The cut-offs were re-fitted on Indian shelves for the same reason any imported scheme struggles here. The full method.

A score is not a forecast of the hexagon. Our own "high in added sugar" flag is 10 g per 100 g, the consumer threshold from ICMR-NIN's 2024 guidance, which is a different test from the proposal's share of energy. And a voluntary score read by people who choose to look is a different thing from a mandatory symbol every shopper sees. It is what can exist while the regulation does not.

What to do until then

The back of the pack already carries everything a front-of-pack warning would summarise. Four numbers per 100 g get you most of the way: sugar, sodium, saturated fat, fibre. How to read an Indian food label walks through them, and how much sugar per 100 g is too much and sodium and salt on Indian labels take the two numbers a warning is most likely to be about.

Common questions

Is the red hexagon warning label mandatory yet?

No. It is a proposal. FSSAI has asked for about four months to issue and finalise the draft regulations, and proposes a further 365 days of voluntary compliance once the final regulation is notified. Until then, nothing on the front of a pack is required to warn you.

Which foods would be exempt?

Single-ingredient foods, and foods that are inherently rich in fat, sugar or salt. FSSAI's August affidavit names ghee, edible oil, salt, sugar, jaggery and honey.

Could the red hexagon be confused with the non-veg mark?

The court asked exactly this. FSSAI's answer is that the non-vegetarian mark is a brown square with a triangle, while the warning is a red hexagon on a white square.

What happened to the Indian Nutrition Rating stars?

The star rating was drafted in 2022 and never notified. FSSAI's 2026 filings to the Supreme Court describe a warning instead. Some manufacturers print star-like symbols voluntarily, so what you see on one pack is not comparable with another.

Does India require the nutrition table itself?

Yes, and that part is settled. Energy, protein, carbohydrate with total and added sugars, total fat with saturated and trans fat, and sodium, per 100 g or 100 ml. Saturated and trans fat are required only above a fat threshold, so a genuinely low-fat pack may omit them compliantly.

Sources

• ThePrint, 24 September 2026 — the 23 September compliance affidavit: the single phase, the thresholds, the symbol, trans fat and the non-veg mark.
• The Hindu, 23 September 2026 — the single-phase proposal and the four-month request.
• NDTV, 28 August 2026 — the first affidavit: the warning wording, the two phases and the exempt foods.

Figures on this page come from labels we have read and hand-checked. Products are described by category rather than named, and no affiliation with or endorsement by any brand is implied.

Last checked: 2026-09-25

Photograph the nutrition table on a pack and get a score out of 100, with the reason behind every point.