The country’s apex food safety regulator has asked websites selling food products to ensure that drinks or pre-mixes such as Bournvita, Complan and Horlicks are not available under the ‘health drink’ or ‘energy drink’ category.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) said this will ensure that people are not misled.
This will be applicable to all websites and apps that sell food products such as food delivery applications like Swiggy or Zomato, grocery delivery apps such as Blinkit or Zepto, as well as general e-commerce websites such as Amazon.
“This corrective action aims to enhance clarity and transparency regarding the nature and functional properties of the products, ensuring that consumers can make well-informed choices without encountering misleading information,” FSSAI said in a statement.
FSSAI said these are licensed as proprietary foods as there is no category called health drinks under the act that governs food products in the country.
“Proprietary items are essentially those that use ingredients for which safety standards exist in the law, but not for the formulation as a whole. As there is no category called health drinks, the drinks should not be categorised as such on websites because it can mislead people,” said an official.
