Study Exposes Gaps In Unhealthy Food Labelling

Food labels may be giving consumers an incomplete picture of how healthy packaged products really are, with a new UK study finding that 95% of processed foods and more than 98% of ultra-processed foods would be classified as unhealthy under government dietary recommendations.

The findings raise questions for India, where packaged food consumption is increasing and clearer labelling is becoming important in tackling obesity, diabetes and other diet-related diseases.

The study, published in the latest edition of BMJ Medicine, by researchers from University College London (UCL), found a wide gap between what dietary guidelines classify as unhealthy and what existing food labels and regulatory systems identify as harmful.

The researchers analysed 1,898 processed and ultra-processed food and drink products available in the UK, including 262 processed and 1,636 ultra-processed products. When assessed against the government's Eatwell Guide, 95% of processed foods and more than 98% of ultra-processed products were classified as unhealthy.

However, the voluntary green, amber and red traffic-light labelling system identified only 48.2% of these products as unhealthy. The Food Standards Agency Nutrient Profiling Model, used to determine which products should face restrictions on advertising and promotion, identified 57.6%.

The discrepancy suggests that consumers relying on front-of-pack labels may fail to recognise the overall nutritional shortcomings of several packaged products.

Lead author Sam Dicken from UCL's Epidemiology and Health Care department said the analysis highlighted inconsistencies in the tools used to regulate healthy and unhealthy foods.

"Current food and drink regulatory tools do not capture products with an excess content of harmful nutrients, but UK dietary guidance does," he said.

Senior author Professor Chris van Tulleken of UCL's Institute of Infection, Immunity and Transplantation said consumers could exceed recommended limits for sugar, salt and saturated fat even when they tried to avoid products carrying red traffic-light warnings.

Although the 95% figure relates exclusively to the UK food market and its dietary guidelines, the findings have relevance for India, where packaged snacks, biscuits, sweetened beverages, instant foods, sauces and ready-to-eat products are increasingly becoming part of everyday diets.

A study published in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia in August 2025, based on the South Asia Biobank, provides an indication of the changing dietary pattern in the region.

The researchers analysed dietary information from 60,714 adults across Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, North India and South India. Nearly three in four participants in North India reported consuming ultra-processed foods in the previous 24 hours, compared with 41% in South India. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka also recorded consumption levels of around 75%.

Among consumers, ultra-processed foods contributed 13-17% of total energy intake. Biscuits were a commonly consumed category across regions, while packaged salty snacks and sweetened beverages were among the other products identified.

The findings underline the need for India-specific research to assess how much ultra-processed food people consume, what products contribute most to their intake and how this varies across age groups and regions.

Another study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in November 2025 developed and validated an India-specific tool to assess ultra-processed food consumption.

Led by Suparna Ghosh-Jerath of The George Institute for Global Health, New Delhi, and colleagues, the study developed a 24-category Nova-UPF screener suited to Indian food habits. Its validation involved 304 adults for concurrent assessment and demonstrated strong agreement with dietary recall-based estimates. The tool could help generate more reliable data on ultra-processed food consumption in the country.

India already has nutritional labelling requirements under the Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020, which require packaged foods to declare information such as energy, protein, carbohydrates, total sugars, added sugars, fats and sodium.

However, the larger public-health question is whether consumers can easily interpret this information while making purchasing decisions. Nutritional declarations on the back of packages may be difficult for many consumers to understand, particularly when comparing products on crowded supermarket shelves.

The UK study also points to a limitation of assessing products only through individual nutrients. A product may not cross the threshold for a red warning on a particular nutrient but may still have an unfavourable overall nutritional profile.

The distinction between processed and ultra-processed foods is also important. Not every processed food is unhealthy. Processing can include preservation, pasteurisation, fermentation and freezing, which do not necessarily compromise nutritional quality. Ultra-processed foods, on the other hand, are generally industrial formulations containing ingredients and additives not commonly used in home cooking and often have high levels of sugar, salt or unhealthy fats and low fibre content.

The Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN), in its Dietary Guidelines for Indians released in 2024, has advised people to minimise the consumption of high-fat, sugar and salt foods as well as ultra-processed products. It has also emphasised choosing fresh and minimally processed foods, reading food labels and reducing salt intake.

The guidelines identify excessive consumption of such foods as a concern in the context of India's growing burden of obesity and non-communicable diseases.

The UCL researchers have called for a more consistent system to identify unhealthy products, aligned with government dietary recommendations and developed independently of food industry influence.