00:00What are India's warning label plans and why is Big Food fighting back?
00:05In a country like India, when you pick up a Diet Coke can or you pick up a chocolate
00:10and you turn it around, on the back of the pack you would actually see an ingredients
00:14list and a small table with nutritional value of the product.
00:18There is no front of pack labeling that is mandated.
00:21Some other countries, however, you would see a red and a green symbol which kind of the
00:27red denotes high sugar, high sodium, whereas the green denotes a product low in sugar.
00:32The food regulator and a lot of health experts in our countries believe that they would help
00:38consumers make more informed choices about the products they consume.
00:41What is Big Food's argument against such labels in India?
00:44Well, we reported that companies like Coca-Cola and others think that these labels would not
00:50really help consumers make informed choices.
00:53They think the labels are confusing and what is really needed is actually for Indians to
00:58understand the concept of portion control like how much they should be eating of a chocolate
01:03or a Coke instead of kind of putting these labels on the front which are going to confuse
01:10the consumer much more.
01:12How will this thing play out?
01:14It's a pretty difficult question.
01:15If you see in the last few years what has happened is whenever the Indian government has
01:20come out and made these proposals, the industry has effectively won.
01:23What is different this time a little bit is the Supreme Court's pressure, the health activists
01:28pressure and the Supreme Court has been very upset with the Indian government that we must
01:33have some sort of front of back labeling?
01:35link.
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