The Central Consumer Protection Authority has fined Britannia Industries Limited Rs 1 lakh for calling one of its breads a '100% Whole Wheat Bread' when the product's own packaging declared whole wheat flour, or atta, at only about 62 percent. The order, passed on October 22, 2026, directs Britannia to stop running the advertisement across print, electronic and social media and to file a compliance report within fifteen days confirming that it has done so.
Here, the regulatory standard the CCPA applied is not a matter of general consumer expectation but a specific labelling rule. Regulation 2.6 of the Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Second Amendment Regulations, 2022 requires a product to contain at least 75 percent whole wheat flour before it can be named or marketed as a 'Whole Wheat Bread.' Britannia's product, by its own declared composition, fell well short of that threshold, and the gap between the claim on the pack and the regulation's minimum was the central fact the CCPA relied on in finding the advertisement misleading.
Britannia offered two lines of defence. First, it argued that the FSSAI's own advisory on the subject, issued on May 28, 2025 and asking food businesses generally to drop the use of the term '100%' in such claims, was non-binding and therefore could not be used against it as though it carried the force of a regulation. Second, it pointed to an asterisked qualifier on its packaging, which it said adequately explained the actual composition to anyone who read the fine print rather than the headline claim.
The CCPA was not persuaded by either answer. It treated the FSSAI advisory as relevant context for why the '100%' framing of such claims had already attracted regulatory attention, even while resting its actual finding of a violation on the binding labelling regulation's 75 percent threshold rather than on the advisory itself. On the asterisk, the Authority took the view that a disclaimer tucked into fine print does not cure a headline claim that misstates the product's basic composition; a consumer scanning the front of the pack is being told something the asterisk, read later and separately, cannot fully undo.
Even so, the penalty itself sits well below the ceiling available to the regulator. Section 21 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 allows the CCPA to direct that a misleading advertisement be discontinued or modified and to impose a penalty of up to Rs 10 lakh, rising further for a repeat violation by the same entity. A Rs 1 lakh fine, against that ceiling, signals a measured first response rather than the maximum the Authority could have imposed, but the discontinuation direction and the fifteen-day compliance report carry independent force regardless of the fine's size.
This is not the CCPA's first intervention in food labelling claims that lean on round, attention-grabbing percentages. Earlier in 2026, the Authority fined Storia Foods Rs 1 lakh over '100% Natural' and '100% Juice' claims on its coconut water and fruit juice products, holding in that case too that compliance with FSSAI's own licensing and safety requirements does not automatically immunise a company against a separate finding that its marketing misleads consumers. Read together, the two orders show a regulator treating FSSAI compliance and advertising-claim accuracy as distinct questions, each capable of generating liability on its own.
For packaged food manufacturers, the practical takeaway is that a labelling claim using words like 'whole wheat,' 'natural' or '100%' will be tested against the specific percentage or compositional threshold a labelling regulation sets for that claim, not against whatever meaning the marketing team intended the phrase to carry. An asterisk or footnote explaining the real composition does not insulate the headline claim if that claim itself falls short of the regulatory threshold, and a non-binding advisory on the same subject, even if it cannot be enforced directly, signals to the CCPA that the regulator has already flagged the practice as a concern.