Big FSSAI order for Dabur — no more ‘100% Natural’ or ‘100% Purity Guaranteed’ on the label. This covers a bunch of their stuff: honey, cow ghee, apple cider vinegar, virgin coconut oil, sesame oil, coconut water, coconut milk, all of it.
What FSSAI Found?
The regulator’s reasoning: these terms can’t actually be verified, and using them anyway misleads the person buying the bottle. FSSAI also pulled up Dabur for putting the Jaivik Bharat organic logo on its apple cider vinegar and organic honey without holding valid certification for it. There’s a third issue too — Dabur Hommade Coconut Milk was being sold with a “100% Purity” tag, which isn’t allowed for compound food products under the 2018 Advertising and Claims Regulations.
Dabur now has 15 days to submit an action taken report. And this wasn’t a first warning. FSSAI says it had flagged the same claims before, and the company’s response wasn’t good enough.
Why This Should Matter To You
Honey and ghee aren’t niche purchases in an Indian home. They show up in daily cooking, in festival prep, in home remedies passed down from grandmothers who swore by a particular brand. A lot of people pay extra for a “pure” tag precisely because it feels like a guarantee. When FSSAI tells the country’s biggest FMCG name that its guarantee doesn’t hold up on paper, that’s the kind of thing that makes shoppers pause at the shelf.It also isn’t the first time Dabur’s honey has faced this question. Back in 2020, the Centre for Science and Environment ran tests on several top brands, including Dabur, using German NMR technology built to catch newer forms of sugar-syrup adulteration that older Indian lab tests miss. Dabur failed that test and called the findings malicious at the time. FSSAI’s current order is a separate, regulatory matter — not a fresh purity test — but it lands right back in that same debate about how much a label can be trusted.
What Happens Next
Nothing disappears off shelves immediately. What you’ll likely notice over the next few weeks is changed packaging and toned-down marketing language as Dabur complies. FSSAI has also been more active on social media lately about naming companies it’s taking action against, so this probably won’t be the last such order this year.