A healthy tax: On taxing foods high in fat, sugar and salt
India, which has a long history of addressing the challenges of undernutrition, has to pivot to attack the curious phenomenon of overnutrition that evolving lifestyles have now laid at its door. The recent National Family Health Survey data showed that in India, while stunting and undernutrition continue to be cause for concern, despite some gains, the sharp rise in adult overweight and obesity , besides diet-related metabolic conditions, cannot be ignored any more. Two unrelated developments have advanced the question of unhealthy diets in very pointed suggestions that would nudge consumers to make the right choices. First, a Parliamentary Standing Committee has recommended mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling indicating whether packaged food products are high in sugar, and second, a national consortium has advised the government to levy a health tax on high fat, salt and sugar foods, and enforce stricter regulations on their advertisements. The Standing Committee on Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution also made a recommendation to include the sugar content in baby foods, attacking the excess sugar consumption issue right where it begins. The consortium on adolescent nutrition, which goes by the practical name Let’s Fix Our Food, is led by the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN), and comprising several other prominent institutions in India and abroad, has recommended that the government ensure a healthier school food environment, stricter regulation of marketing of unhealthy food, and front-of-pack nutrition labelling. These efforts will be among the steps to tackle the rising burden of obesity and diet-related non communicable diseases that require a comprehensive strategy helmed by the government. According to the World Health Organization, since 2017, at least 133 countries have increased or introduced a new health tax. A “junk food law” came into force in Colombia in 2023, to tackle the high consumption of packaged foods. An additional tax on such foods began at 10%, rose to 15% the next year and touched 20% the subsequent year. Norway, Hungary, Denmark, Bermuda, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Navajo Nation (U.S.), have also specifically implemented taxes on unprocessed sugar and sugar-added foods. With the ICMR-NIN report indicating that over 17 million children and adolescents are affected by obesity, and that this number can cross 27 million by 2030, there cannot be a better time to act on these suggestions that will go a long way in educating the consumer to make healthy food choices. Published - August 01, 2026 12:10 am IST Read Comments Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit READ LATER SEE ALL Remove Related Topics India / nutrition and diet / lifestyle diseases / health / obesity / Parliament proceedings / food / taxes and duties / government / school / non-communicable diseases / World Health Organization / Colombia / Norway / Hungary / Denmark / Bermuda / USA / children / healthy lifestyle
- 1Parliamentary Standing Committees, like the one on Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution that recommended front-of-pack labelling, are oversight mechanisms that scrutinise policy in depth outside the floor of Parliament. Though not binding, their recommendations carry weight and often shape rules framed later by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. This shows how expert committee input feeds into India's regulatory process well before any legislation is formally introduced.
- 2The World Health Organization's monitoring shows that since 2017 at least 133 countries have introduced or raised a health tax on unhealthy food or drink, part of a coordinated global push under its Non-communicable Diseases Global Action Plan. India's own experience with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control set an earlier precedent for using taxation as a behavioural tool, later extended internationally to sugar and HFSS foods. This global trend gives India a template from over a hundred countries' experience for calibrating any future health tax.
- 3Any HFSS tax in India would likely operate under the Goods and Services Tax framework, through the compensation cess mechanism already used to tax tobacco and aerated drinks as 'sin goods' under the GST (Compensation to States) Act, 2017. Separately, mandatory front-of-pack warning labels would need to be notified as regulations under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, by the FSSAI, following the pattern set by countries like Chile, which pioneered black octagonal warning labels in 2016. Both instruments would need clear regulatory backing to withstand legal challenge from food industry stakeholders.
- 4The ICMR-NIN's Let's Fix Our Food consortium found that over 17 million Indian children and adolescents are affected by obesity, a number it projects could cross 27 million by 2030 without action. Non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular illness already account for over 60 percent of all deaths in India annually, according to WHO estimates, making diet-linked disease a bigger burden than undernutrition in absolute terms. Colombia's phased HFSS tax, rising from 10 to 20 percent over three years, offers a concrete numeric benchmark India could adapt.