Bans, High Sugar & Adulteration: How Safe Is India’s Food?

Fanta is not the only multinational product being questioned.

Reuters reported significant formulation differences between some products sold in India and versions sold overseas.

For example, standard KitKat sold in India was reported to contain 4.5% cocoa solids, while milk chocolate used in the Australian version contains at least 22% cocoa.

Maggi has also attracted attention. Maggi instant noodles sold in India use palm oil, while several versions available in Britain use sunflower oil.

Some Maggi products sold in Britain also carry prominent front-of-pack warnings indicating high salt levels.

These products have not been banned in India on these grounds. The issue is instead about ingredient differences, nutritional transparency and whether Indian consumers should receive warnings comparable to those provided in some overseas markets.

Everest and LG Compounded Hing: Sale Prohibited

Unlike the Fanta controversy, the recent action involving compounded hing is an actual regulatory prohibition.

On August 29, FSSAI issued a Prohibition of Sale order concerning compounded hing manufactured by Everest Food Products and Laljee Godhoo and Company.

FSSAI said laboratory testing found samples to be substandard.

Regulations require compounded hing to contain sufficient raw hing to provide at least 5% alcohol-soluble extract.

According to FSSAI, tested samples contained only 0–3%.

Six varieties of raw hing sampled at the LG unit were also reported to contain 15–32% starch, against a maximum permitted level of 1%.

FSSAI consequently prohibited sale of the affected compounded hing products and advised the companies to voluntarily recall substandard products already in the market.

Ghee Products: FSSAI Prohibits Sale

Another significant action came in August against ghee manufactured by Daman-based SDP Industries.

FSSAI prohibited the sale of all variants of ghee manufactured, stored or sold by the company from its authorised premises until further orders.

The action included products marketed under brands such as Shraddha, Shree Saras and Gokul.

Laboratory analysis detected β-sitosterol, a plant sterol that is required to be absent in ghee, as well as non-conformity in fatty-acid composition.

The findings raised adulteration concerns and resulted in the prohibition-of-sale order.

Paneer vs Analogue Cheese

Another major issue in 2026 has been products resembling paneer but made using substitutes such as vegetable fats.

FSSAI clarified that selling cheese analogue as “paneer” is a serious violation.

Food businesses have been instructed to clearly identify such products and restaurants have been told not to mislead customers by presenting analogue products as genuine paneer.

Regulators were also directed to conduct extensive inspections of businesses manufacturing or using cheese analogues in the dairy context.

The distinction is important: the national enforcement issue is not simply that every analogue product is automatically illegal, but that substitutes must not be deceptively represented to consumers as genuine paneer.

Some states have subsequently gone further with restrictions of their own.

Whisky and Rum Also Faced Sale Prohibitions

FSSAI's 2026 enforcement has extended beyond conventional food.

Several whisky and rum products faced prohibition-of-sale orders after laboratory tests identified the use of external artificial or nature-identical flavours in products marketed as standard whisky or rum.

The affected products included variants from brands such as Old Monk, McDowell's, Bagpiper, Antiquity Blue and Royal Challenge.

FSSAI said products relying on external flavouring to imitate the characteristic flavour of standard rum or whisky could be substandard or misleading when they are marketed as standard products without accurately describing their true nature.

In some cases, conditional relaxation was subsequently granted after appeals, including requirements for clearer front-of-pack disclosure for existing stock.

More Than 40,000 Food Samples Failed to Conform

The larger picture explains why consumers appear to be hearing about food-safety actions so frequently.

According to government data, 2,23,808 food samples were analysed across India during 2025–26.

Of these, 40,023 samples were found to be non-conforming.

That means nearly 18% of the samples tested did not conform to the prescribed requirements, although “non-conforming” does not automatically mean every sample was dangerously contaminated. Failures can involve different types and degrees of regulatory non-compliance.

The figures nevertheless demonstrate the scale of India's food-safety challenge.

Why Does It Feel Like Food Bans Are Increasing Every Day?

There are several reasons.

Food-safety surveillance and laboratory testing are expanding. Regulators are paying greater attention to adulteration, misleading labels and non-permitted ingredients. Consumers are becoming more aware of nutritional information, while social media allows food-safety findings to spread rapidly.

At the same time, comparisons between products sold in India and those sold overseas are creating a new question for multinational food companies:

Should Indian consumers receive the same level of nutritional transparency and prominent warnings available to consumers in other countries?

That question has now moved beyond social media and into India's regulatory and judicial debate.

A Ban and a Warning Are Not the Same

Consumers should therefore be careful when encountering claims online that a particular food has been “banned.”

There is an important difference between:

BANNED / SALE PROHIBITED — regulators have legally stopped the sale of a product.

RECALLED — a particular product or batch is being removed from the market.

SEIZED / ENFORCEMENT ACTION — authorities have taken action over suspected or established regulatory violations.

UNDER SCRUTINY — concerns have been raised, but the product remains legally available.

HIGH SUGAR / SALT / FAT — a nutritional concern does not by itself mean that the product is banned.

Fanta is a good example of the last category. It remains available in India, but its sugar content and formulation have become part of a much larger debate about how packaged foods should be labelled.

What is changing in 2026 is therefore bigger than a simple list of banned foods.

India appears to be entering a period of substantially greater scrutiny over what is inside packaged food, how it is manufactured, what companies claim on the label, and how clearly consumers are warned about what they are eating and drinking.