Your cup of coffee is coming in for a lot of surveillance with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) directing state food safety commissioners to ensure that companies are complying with standards for packaged coffee products.
Be warned: if a coffee product blended with chicory carries the label “pure,” it is definitely under scrutiny.
Regulatory action would be taken against errant food business operators as labelling norms state that the term “pure” can only be used to describe single-ingredient food products. The coffee content in a coffee-chicory mixture should not be less than 51% by mass, and the chicory content should not be more than 49%.Every packaged coffee product also must display on its label the percentage content of coffee and chicory “separately”. Also, if a coffee product has a blend of chicory; it cannot use the term “pure coffee.”
The direction from the food safety authority comes after certain coffee products, which are blended with chicory, were found to be in violation of the standards.
“It has been observed that the products available in the market are in violation of these provisions and are either depicting coffee-chicory mixtures as “pure coffee” or are not declaring the percentage content of coffee and chicory separately in the mixtures,” the FSSAI stated in its letter.
Food Safety Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations outline standards for coffee and coffee-chicory mixtures “distinctly,” the regulator added.
For some time, coffee planters in the southern region have been against blending and urging authorities to reduce the permissible content of chicory allowed in such mixtures. The FSSAI has also been deliberating on a proposal to increase the coffee content in the coffee-chicory mixture to 70 percent and reduce the permissible content to 30 percent from the current 49 percent.
The addition of chicory, which is a French root, makes the coffee thicker and gives it a woody flavour. The practise of adding chicory to coffee began in Europe, especially during wartime when there was rationing. It is conjectured that the British introduced the coffee-chicory blend into India. But now the Coffee Board wants to ensure that people are aware of what they are consuming, hence the labelling norms.