How to Read Indian Food Labels 2026 | Complete Guide | AaharIQ

The ingredient list is the single most important part of any Indian food label. Under FSSAI regulations, it must list every ingredient by its common name in descending order by weight (most to least). What it reveals:

• Ingredient #1 = primary component. If "refined wheat flour (maida)" is #1, the product is primarily maida regardless of "multigrain" claims on the front.

• Sugar in any form in the first 3 = high-sugar product. Sugar, glucose syrup, dextrose, maltodextrin in positions 1–3 means the product is predominantly sugar.

• "Nature-identical flavouring" or "artificial flavouring" = synthetic chemicals designed to taste like fruit, butter, or other natural foods. Not a safety concern at regulated doses, but not "natural."

• "Edible vegetable oil" without specification = almost certainly palm oil. FSSAI requires naming the specific oil type from April 2021, but enforcement is inconsistent.

• E-numbers in the ingredient list = food additives. Cross-reference with AaharIQ or our Article 35 guide to understand each one.

The Per-100g vs Per-Serving Trap

FSSAI requires NIP to show both per 100g and per serving. Manufacturers set serving sizes — and they routinely set them unrealistically small to make numbers look better. A 200g packet of biscuits may declare a "serving" of 25g (5 biscuits) when most people eat 8–10 biscuits (40–50g). Always multiply per-serving numbers by how many servings you actually consume.

Reading Sugar Correctly

"Total sugars" on the NIP includes naturally occurring and added sugars combined. For packaged food with no dairy (which has natural lactose), all sugars are essentially added. A product with 22g total sugar per 100g has 22g of added sugar per 100g — equivalent to 5.5 teaspoons of sugar per 100g of product.

Reading Sodium Correctly

Sodium ≠ salt. Salt is approximately 40% sodium and 60% chloride. To convert sodium to salt equivalent: multiply sodium by 2.5. A product with 600mg sodium per 100g contains 1,500mg salt (1.5g salt) per 100g. WHO recommends maximum 5g salt (2,000mg sodium) per day.

In India, any food product can call itself "natural." Any product can call itself "multigrain." Any product with trace amounts of 5 vitamins can call itself "fortified." These claims have no regulatory threshold requirement in India. The only truth is in the ingredient list and the nutrition information panel.

AaharIQ automates the entire label-reading process in 3 seconds. Instead of manually parsing ingredient lists, calculating per-serving vs per-100g figures, identifying sugar aliases, and cross-referencing additives — AaharIQ does all of this instantly on barcode scan. The app provides: a truthful product name (what it actually is based on ingredients), total sugar from all sources, total sodium from all sources, additive safety ratings, health filter assessments, and a plain-language verdict.

You should not need 10 minutes of food chemistry knowledge to know whether a product is healthy. AaharIQ democratises food label intelligence — so every Indian consumer gets in 3 seconds what currently requires a nutritionist to evaluate.

Every legitimately registered Indian food product carries a 14-digit FSSAI license or registration number, mandatorily displayed alongside the FSSAI logo on packaging — and knowing how to read this number turns it from a meaningless string of digits into a genuinely useful verification tool. The number breaks down into distinct sections: the first digit indicates whether the business operates under basic registration or a full license (reflecting business scale), the second and third digits identify the state where the business is registered, the fourth and fifth digits indicate the year of registration, and the remaining digits form a unique identifier for that specific food business operator. Beyond simply confirming a number is present on the package, this number can be independently verified through FSSAI's official online license verification portal — entering the number pulls up the registered business name and registration status, allowing a shopper to confirm a product's FSSAI number actually corresponds to a real, currently valid registration rather than a fabricated or expired one printed on the packaging. This verification step is a genuinely underused but freely available tool, particularly useful for unfamiliar brands or products purchased from less established retail channels where counterfeit or unregistered products are more likely to appear. This same verification step is worth applying specifically to any product bought through an unfamiliar online marketplace or small, unbranded retail outlet, where the incentive and opportunity for counterfeit labelling is meaningfully higher than at an established supermarket chain. A minute of checking can prevent a much bigger problem later. Free, fast, and genuinely reassuring. A habit worth building.

The green and brown dot system marking vegetarian and non-vegetarian food is one of the most recognised elements of Indian food labelling, but its precise design and scope carry more detail than casual recognition captures. The mandated vegetarian symbol is specifically a green circle inside a green square, while the non-vegetarian symbol is a brown or dark red circle inside a brown or dark red square of the same shape — a deliberate, colour-blind-accessible design distinction beyond colour alone, since the shapes themselves (not just the colours) are meant to be distinguishable. What's less widely understood is that this marking requirement extends beyond obviously meat-containing products: even trace non-vegetarian ingredients — including some additives, processing aids, and emulsifiers derived from animal sources, such as certain gelatin-based or animal-derived stabilisers sometimes used in confectionery and dairy products — require the brown mark under current regulation, regardless of how minor that ingredient's presence is relative to the product's overall composition. This makes the symbol a more genuinely reliable check for strict vegetarians than scanning the ingredient list alone, since some animal-derived processing aids don't always appear as an obviously named ingredient the way meat or egg would. For anyone strictly avoiding all animal-derived ingredients for religious, ethical, or dietary reasons, treating the brown mark as the definitive check — rather than relying solely on reading through a long ingredient list for unfamiliar additive names — is the more dependable habit to build. A tiny symbol, a genuinely reliable signal. Look for the shape, not just the colour. Simple, reliable, always worth a glance.

Indian food labelling regulation distinguishes between "best before" and "expiry date" (or "use by") in a way that carries genuine legal and food-safety significance, despite the two terms frequently being treated interchangeably in casual conversation. A "best before" date indicates the point up to which a manufacturer guarantees the product's optimal quality — flavour, texture, and nutritional content at their peak — but a product past this date isn't necessarily unsafe to consume, merely potentially past its ideal quality window; this labelling is typically used for shelf-stable products like biscuits, packaged snacks, and many pantry staples. An "expiry" or "use by" date, by contrast, indicates a genuine safety cutoff — consuming a product after this date carries real risk of spoilage-related illness, and this stricter labelling is legally required specifically for foods where safety, not just quality, meaningfully deteriorates over time, including infant formula, certain dairy products, and other perishable or health-sensitive categories. Confusing the two — either discarding a "best before" product prematurely out of unnecessary caution, or consuming a genuine "expiry" product past its date assuming it behaves like a "best before" item — represents a real, avoidable gap in label literacy that this specific distinction, once understood, closes. When in doubt about which category a specific product falls into, checking the label's exact wording rather than assuming based on the product type is the safer approach. Both words matter more than they first appear. Read the label, not the assumption. Two words, one important difference.

The batch or lot number printed on packaged food, often overlooked as unremarkable regulatory boilerplate, serves a genuinely important practical function that becomes relevant precisely when something goes wrong. In the event of a product recall — whether due to a manufacturing defect, contamination discovery, or an adulteration finding of the kind covered elsewhere on this site — the batch number is what allows a manufacturer or regulator to identify and recall only the specific affected production run, rather than every unit of that product ever manufactured. For a consumer, checking the batch number against any officially issued recall notice (increasingly communicated through FSSAI's own channels and news coverage when significant recalls occur) is the only reliable way to determine whether a specific product already sitting in a kitchen cupboard is actually affected by a given recall, since two packages of the same product bought at different times can easily come from entirely different, unaffected batches. Keeping packaging or at minimum noting the batch number for products purchased in bulk or stored long-term — particularly infant formula, medication-adjacent nutritional products, and other higher-stakes categories — is a small habit that provides genuine practical value specifically in the relatively rare but consequential event of a recall. A quick photo of the packaging before it's discarded is an easy way to preserve this information without extra effort. Small habit, real peace of mind. Rarely needed, invaluable when it is. Cheap insurance.