FSSAI Sends Show-Cause Notices to Nestlé India and HUL Over Claims on Six Products

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued four show-cause notices to Nestlé India and Hindustan Unilever (HUL) covering six products, questioning how they are labelled, classified and advertised. The regulator announced the action on social media on 17 October 2026, BestMediaInfo and Madhyamam reported.

Both companies must reply within the stipulated period, and FSSAI has said further action may follow if their explanations are not satisfactory.

Nestlé India: Nescafé drinks and a kidney-care powder

The first notice to Nestlé covers three ready-to-drink Nescafé beverages: Intense Café Cappuccino, Choco Mocha and Chilled Latte. According to the reports, the front of the pack called them flavoured milk, the back described them as proprietary food, and online listings called them coffee-flavoured milk. FSSAI said the drinks fall in the standardised flavoured milk category and that the labelling and advertising breached the Advertising and Claims Regulations, 2018 and the Labelling and Display Regulations, 2020.

The second notice concerns Resource Renal Vanilla Flavour Powder, sold for the dietary management of people with chronic kidney disease. FSSAI said the product needed prior approval under its 2022 regulations for special dietary and medical-purpose foods, which Nestlé had not obtained, and that the label lacked the mandatory vegetarian or non-vegetarian mark.

HUL: two Horlicks variants

For Horlicks Women's Plus Chocolate, the regulator found several bone-health claims misleading or non-compliant, including a claim of clinically proven improvement in bone strength within six months. It also questioned a "healthy muscles" claim, a "no added sugar" claim on a product containing maltodextrin, a claim of 100% of the recommended daily allowance of calcium, vitamin D and K2, and the format of the nutrition table.

For Horlicks Mother's Plus Kesar, FSSAI flagged the "healthy birth weight" claim on the label and in advertising as potentially misleading, and objected to references to pregnancy, birth weight and DHA in the product's name on an e-commerce platform. It also asked licensing authorities and e-commerce platforms to act.

A wider crackdown

In the same round, FSSAI cancelled the licence of Bala Ji Food Products after continued non-compliance and suspended the licence of Sukhdarshan Pharma, whose inspection reportedly returned a compliance score of 11%.

The notices add to earlier scrutiny of Nestlé. BestMediaInfo reported that on 18 September FSSAI flagged claims on two of its infant formulas, and that on 3 October it declared a sample of Nestlé's Low Fat Dairy Whitener unsafe and substandard, a finding the company disputes. The regulator said in August that it had issued more than 150 notices to food companies in recent months over misleading advertising and labelling.

Nestlé India had not commented on the latest notices as of 18 October, and no response from HUL had been reported. The notices come days after Nestlé India reported a 46% rise in advertising spend in the September quarter.