Public health experts in Bangladesh have renewed calls for mandatory front-of-package warning labels on foods high in salt, sugar and saturated fat, urging the government to finalise draft regulations that have stalled amid what speakers described as industry pressure for weaker rules. The call came at a webinar organised by the research and advocacy group Progga, with support from the Global Health Advocacy Incubator, held to mark World Food Day.
The draft Safe Food, Packaged Food Labelling, Regulations would require clear warning symbols on the front of packaged food, rather than relying solely on nutrition tables on the back of packs, which speakers said are too complex for most consumers to interpret quickly while shopping. Mohammad Shoeb, a member of the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority, said the draft rules currently sit with the Ministry of Food and that he hopes they will be formally notified soon, though no timeline has been confirmed by the ministry itself.
Diet-related disease is the driving concern
Nearly 71 percent of deaths in Bangladesh are now caused by non-communicable diseases, according to figures cited by Mohammad Mushtuq Husain, a former chief scientific officer at the country’s epidemiology institute, who said unhealthy diets are a major contributing risk factor. Separate research cited at the webinar found 97 percent of people in Bangladesh eat ultra-processed foods at least once a week, underscoring how deeply packaged and processed food has penetrated everyday diets even in a country where traditional, home-cooked meals remain the norm for many households outside urban centres.
Abu Ahmed Shamim of the BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health said warning-based labels, which use bold symbols or colour coding to flag unhealthy products at a glance, are consistently the most effective labelling approach for actually changing what consumers buy, citing evidence from countries including Chile and Mexico that adopted similar octagonal warning-stamp systems over the past decade. Muhammad Ruhul Quddus of the Global Health Advocacy Incubator said mandatory labelling could reduce healthcare spending over time by cutting diet-related chronic disease, tying the proposal to the UN’s sustainable development target on reducing premature mortality from non-communicable disease.
Industry accused of stalling tactics
Speakers alleged that food industry stakeholders have lobbied for a voluntary labelling system instead, along with longer implementation timelines, exemptions for small packaging and label designs that are less visually prominent than the warning symbols public health advocates favour. The dispute echoes similar industry pushback seen elsewhere in the Global South over nutrition policy, including Nigeria’s separate push this month to address maternal anaemia through expanded supplementation rather than relying on food reformulation alone.
Representatives from the World Health Organization and the public health group Vital Strategies also spoke at the webinar, both organisations having supported front-of-pack labelling policies in other countries as part of broader non-communicable disease prevention strategies. Bangladesh would join a growing list of countries, concentrated in Latin America but increasingly including Asian nations, that have adopted mandatory warning labels over the past decade, a shift advocates hope will eventually reshape how food manufacturers formulate products rather than simply relabel them.
Advocates point to Chile’s experience, where mandatory warning labels introduced alongside advertising restrictions and school food rules were followed by measurable declines in purchases of labelled products, as the model Bangladesh’s draft regulation most closely follows. Progga and its partners say they plan to keep pressing the Ministry of Food publicly rather than relying solely on technical consultations, arguing that sustained public attention has been the main factor that moved similar regulations forward in other countries where industry lobbying initially stalled progress for years.
