Bitter and sweet: on FSSAI draft restrictions, added sugars in infant foods

The Food Safety and Standards Regulations 2020 currently allow manufacturers to add sucrose and fructose, provided their combined total does not exceed 20% of the carbohydrates in a product intended for infants aged 0-6 months. In a draft proposal, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has pitched to eliminate this allowance — in line with WHO’s recommendation to have infants breastfeed exclusively for the first six months, followed by nutritionally adequate complementary foods avoiding added sugars until 24 months. While corporations have defended sugary formulations as abiding by the Codex Alimentarius, public health experts have repeatedly described their decision to sell infant foods with added sugar as nutritional dumping. Adding sugar has often been a commercial strategy, as it serves as a cheap bulking agent, improves palatability and encourages repeat purchases. WHO’s nutrient and promotion profile model for baby foods in 2022 also identified sweet purées and products in which fruits released sugars during processing as concerns. While the FSSAI’s draft proposal is a step in the right direction, stopping here would allow manufacturers to replace sucrose with another sweetening ingredient. It should assess the ingredients that manufacturers add and the nutritional profile of the finished food, thus completing the loop, with the Infant Milk Substitutes, Feeding Bottles, and Infant Foods Act 1992 rightly restricting aggressively the marketing of infant foods for children up to two years old.

Research has found that children who regularly received sweetened water during infancy subsequently preferred sweeter liquids, while exposure to different infant formula flavours influenced their dietary preferences years later, including for foods tasting neutral or bitter. Across both personal and public health dimensions, then, infants need to encounter diverse flavours. Since the 2024 dietary guidelines of the ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition say that children under two should avoid added sugars, the FSSAI’s draft proposal limiting itself to six months seems like a concession to manufacturers. This should be avoided since India’s regulatory response to ultra-processed foods is expanding after years of sluggishness. India is currently mulling restrictions on added sugar in foods for the youngest infants, on unhealthy foods around schools, and on front-of-pack labelling for packaged foods. If the FSSAI does not expand its proposed restriction to cover all added sugars and extend it across the first 24 months, and pair it with mandatory, interpretative front-of-pack labelling for all foods, its regulatory progress will remain incomplete.