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Aditya Kalra
@adityakalra
Reuters journalist. Editor, India Company News. Sector agnostic. Decoding secret business strategies. Deeply reported + investigative journalism. Opinions mine
Joined October 2009
632 Following    15.1K Followers
INDIA WARNINGS LABELS & BIG FOOD -- A box of Kellogg's Chocos in India is 27% added sugar by weight. Under India's proposed pack warning labels, it would potentially carry no warning at all. That is what has health activists upset. Food companies are upset for the opposite reason. "Everything will be red," one Indian chief executive told us. Why? The design at the heart of it is the reason -- A red hexagon appears only when a product is high in two of three nutrients — sugar, salt, fat. High in just one? Nothing. Chocos keeps its fat and salt within the limits, so the sugar alone doesn't count. Chile does it differently. Each nutrient gets its own black octagon. "It will be meaningless. No other country uses the double nutrient approach," Barry Popkin of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health told us. Industry's objection runs the other way. Seven executives told us the thresholds are among the world's strictest, and that judging a product per 100 grams is absurd. "Nobody consumes 100 grams of a pickle or ketchup," one said. Nor is this only about the multinationals. @FirozNaqvi of India's Federation of Sweets and Namkeen Manufacturers says its 5,000 members are deeply concerned, because sugar, salt and fat are intrinsic to mithai and namkeen. "A substantial majority of packaged traditional sweets and namkeen could attract warnings...It could negatively affect consumer perception and demand."
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