Hard-handed Indian official urges food firms to be ethical amid labelling, ingredients dispute

Reuters also reported this week that companies such as Coca-Cola and groups representing Nestle, PepsiCo and others lobbied successfully against India's plan to have front-of-pack warning labels, even though those companies voluntarily have put them on their products in many European markets for years.

India's federal food regulator buckled after a tense March meeting where a Coca-Cola executive argued warning labels were pointless because they won't prevent consumers from otherwise having sugary foods, and because Indian doctors had done a good job telling patients what to avoid, Reuters reported.

Mundhe in a LinkedIn post, where he shared the Reuters story, rebutted that remark, saying: "Warning labels don’t insult consumer intelligence, they respect it."

"The argument that doctors already advise patients misses the point: prevention should not depend on already being sick," he wrote.