Pushing the Centre on packaged-food warning labels, the Supreme Court welcomed the FSSAI’s proposed “red hexagon” HIGH FAT / SUGAR / SALT front-of-pack warning but flagged gaps in its phasing, thresholds and timeline, and put 13 pointed questions to the regulator, framing the exercise as part of the right to health under Article 21.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has taken significant steps towards mandatory Front-of-Package Labelling (FoPL) on packaged foods, recording the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s (FSSAI) proposal for a prominent “red hexagon” warning label declaring products “HIGH FAT,” “HIGH SUGAR” or “HIGH SALT,” while identifying a series of unresolved questions on how the scheme would work and directing the regulator to answer them, in a matter the Court has anchored firmly in the fundamental right to health [3S and Our Health Society v. Union of India and Another].
A Bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran, in an order dated September 10, 2026, acknowledged the “significant progress” the FSSAI had made since the previous hearing, but found that several specifics “anchoring the practical implementation” of the proposal remained ambiguous, and posed 13 detailed questions for the regulator to address by affidavit within ten days.
The health-and-Constitution framing
The order builds on the Court’s earlier direction, of August 13, 2026, which had pressed the Union and the FSSAI to make “urgent and significant headway” on front-of-pack labelling, drawing inspiration from international standards. The Court had emphasised the “obvious, scientifically substantiated and commonly known nexus” between health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and hypertension and foods classed as High in Fat, Sugar or Salt (HFSS) or Ultra-Processed Foods (UPF), and had reasoned that clear labelling would enable informed consumer choice and, over time, drive product reformulation.
Crucially, the Court located the issue within the constitutional guarantee of health. As it had observed in the earlier order, the right to life under Article 21 encompasses the right to health, casting a duty on the State not only to refrain from impairing health but to take affirmative steps to protect it, reinforced by Article 47, which makes the improvement of public health a primary duty of the State. In a striking passage, the Court had rejected the Union’s suggestion that India could not match the standards of developed countries, asking pointedly whether India should “remain as an underdeveloped country,” and adding that “the World should know that India is very much concerned about the overall health of its citizens, more particularly the growing children.”
The FSSAI’s ‘red hexagon’ proposal
In response, the FSSAI filed an affidavit setting out its proposed model. The regulator proposed a prominent front-of-pack warning in a red hexagonal shape for food products high in two or more nutrients of concern, added saturated fat, added sugar and salt, based on the thresholds in the Dietary Guidelines for Indians, 2024 issued by the ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition. The label would carry declarations such as “HIGH FAT,” “HIGH SUGAR,” “HIGH SALT” and/or “HIGHLY SWEETENED BEVERAGE,” displayed in a font one point larger than the nutrition-information table on the back of the pack.
Single-ingredient products, and staples inherently rich in fat, sugar or salt such as ghee, edible oil, salt, sugar, jaggery and honey, would be exempt. The FSSAI proposed a phased roll-out: Phase I covering products high in two or more of the specified nutrients (and specified sweetened beverages), and Phase II extending the warning to products high in any one of them.
Where the Court found the proposal wanting
While welcoming the proposal, the Bench identified several gaps. On the phasing, it took note of the petitioner’s argument that requiring “two or more” nutrients-of-concern to trigger a Phase I warning is not backed by science, since excess sugar, excess salt and excess saturated fat are each independently harmful through different pathways, sugar linked to diabetes, salt to hypertension, saturated fat to cardiovascular disease, so a “two or more” trigger would sharply narrow the products captured in the first phase. The Court also flagged a definitional inconsistency: the 2024 Guidelines define HFSS foods using the conjunctive “and,” while the 2022 Draft Regulations use the disjunctive “or,” a confusion it said “needs to be resolved” as a matter of priority.
On timeline, the Court warned that the absence of a fixed period separating the two phases raised concerns that Phase II “might take a backseat or be indefinitely postponed,” and insisted on a “reasonable, scientifically justified and clearly defined” transitionary period. It noted the petitioner’s suggestion, drawing on the Israeli model, that a phased approach could instead move progressively from higher to lower thresholds over a defined period, an idea the Court said it saw “some logic” in.
The Court raised further practical concerns: that warning labels targeting fat, sugar and salt might have the “unintended and unfortunate consequence” of pushing manufacturers towards more artificial preservatives, emulsifiers and additives to replace those ingredients’ functional roles, a danger the FSSAI must guard against with corresponding regulation; that a “nutrient reference value per serving” data-based model, though scientifically sound, could become “a red herring, likely to be ignored,” making a caution-raising warning label preferable; and, intriguingly, that because Indian consumers habitually associate the colour red with non-vegetarian food, the FSSAI should reconsider whether red is the right choice of colour for the warning.
Mandatory rollout and nutritional literacy in schools
The Court pressed the FSSAI on whether the final FoPL regime would be mandatory “from the get-go,” noting that the 2022 Draft Regulations had contemplated a voluntary period of up to 48 months before compliance became mandatory, and asking the regulator to justify any such transition period. It also devoted attention to children, recording UNICEF data that the proportion of overweight school-age children and adolescents (5-19 years) rose from 2% to 10% between 2000 and 2022, and the telling contrast that while around 80% of food available inside schools is freshly cooked, nearly 80% of what is available in the vicinity of schools is packaged snacks. On that footing, the Court asked the Union to explain how schools would build nutritional literacy, teaching children how to interpret nutrition information and FoPL, through curriculum, initiatives and workshops.
The Bench framed 13 specific questions for the FSSAI and the Union, spanning the timeline for the two phases, the scientific basis for the “two or more” trigger, the identification of sweetened beverages and their thresholds, how trans-fat and total-versus-saturated fat would be counted, the dimensions and placement of the red hexagon, how the label would cater to varying levels of literacy without distinct pictorial symbols, the regulation of additive substitution, and the plan for nutritional literacy in schools. It directed the FSSAI to respond by affidavit within ten days and posted the matter for September 28, 2026.
Why the order matters
The order is among the most consequential recent examples of the Supreme Court using its constitutional jurisdiction to drive public-health policy that the executive had been slow to finalise. Front-of-pack warning labelling has been debated in India for years, with successive draft regulations and an industry-favoured “star rating” model that critics said was too weak to change behaviour. By recasting the debate in the language of Article 21 and Article 47, and by extracting a concrete “red hexagon” warning proposal from the FSSAI and then stress-testing it question by question, the Court has both accelerated the process and raised the bar for what a credible scheme must contain: a science-based definition of HFSS foods, a firm timeline, a mandatory character, and safeguards against unintended consequences like additive substitution.
Equally notable is the order’s child-centred focus and its granular engagement with the science and design of labelling, from calorie thresholds to font size to the cultural connotations of colour. That level of detail signals that the Court intends to supervise not just whether India adopts front-of-pack warnings, but whether the design actually works to change what consumers, and especially children, eat. With the FSSAI’s answers due and the matter listed for late September, the shape of India’s eventual junk-food warning regime, and how soon it becomes mandatory, will take clearer form in the coming weeks.
Case Title: 3S and Our Health Society v. Union of India and Another [Miscellaneous Application No. 1177 of 2025 in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 437 of 2024]
Bench: Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran
Citation: 2026 INSC 988
Date of Order: September 10, 2026