India, Sept. 25 -- It took eight years, a colour-coded proposal that died without a whimper, and a Supreme Court ultimatum, but the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has finally decided to put front-of-pack labels (FoPL) on packaged food, that too in a single phase. The regulator has given itself four months to finalise the rules, and food companies a year after that to clear existing stock. Even as India moves towards clear and explicit nutritional warnings, this episode underscores the extraordinary delay, and the consequent loss to national health, in reaching this point. FSSAI had included a colour-coded FoPL system in its 2018 draft Labelling and Display Guidelines. Yet, only after the apex court pulled up FSSAI in...