Why are some packaged foods under the scanner?

The story so far: A study of 432 convenience food products, in five categories — idli mixes, breakfast cereals, porridge mixes, beverage mixes, soup mixes — and extruded snacks, has found that a majority of these ready-to-eat/packaged food products are high in carbohydrates. The study, ‘Assessment of front and back of pack nutrition labels of selected convenience food products and snacks available in the Indian market’ by Shobana Shanmugam et al, was published in Plos One. The study also found that despite FSSAI’s packaging and labelling regulations requiring products to display the minimum nutritional information for energy, protein, carbohydrate, sugar, and total fat as “per 100 g” or “100 ml” or “per serving” of the product on the label, only certain breakfast cereals and some beverages widely disclosed the concept of per-serving information. “We want the warning labels to be specific, so, for instance, a customer with hypertension can avoid food labelled as ‘high sodium’ or a customer with diabetes can avoid high sugar foods,” said Vandana Prasad, a public health professional associated with the Public Health Resource Network.