- Products with non-milk fats should not be marketed as analogue paneer
- FSSAI proposes reserving "paneer" term exclusively for milk-based products
- Paneer was originally defined as a product with 50% milk fat and 60% solids
Products made using non-milk fats should not be marketed as "analogue paneer", as the term misleads consumers, Pradip Chakraborty, former director of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), told NDTV Profit.
The remarks came as the regulator moves to tighten norms on what can legally be called paneer.
FSSAI has proposed reserving the term "paneer" exclusively for products made from milk, meaning dairy analogues made partly or wholly from non-milk ingredients would no longer be permitted to use the word in their names, labels or marketing.
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Chakraborty said the move is aimed at protecting consumers rather than traders.
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Under the Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011, he said, paneer was defined as a pure milk product required to contain at least 50% milk fat and 60% milk solids.
In 2020, however, FSSAI introduced a separate "analogue paneer" category, in which milk fat is replaced wholly or partly by vegetable fat or protein.
"This paneer issue is not at all an issue" under the original standard, Chakraborty said, adding that the confusion stems entirely from the analogue category introduced later.
He argued the category name itself was the problem: "The analogue paneer name should be removed… there should not be any name, because it is misleading," he said, noting that restaurants and caterers often use analogue paneer while selling dishes as regular paneer preparations.
Chakraborty said the health difference was significant even where taste was similar.
"It is not unsafe, but unhealthy definitely, because the vegetable [fat] is not healthy," he said, adding that analogue paneer typically sells for around Rs 200 a kilogram against roughly Rs 400 a kilogram for pure milk paneer — a price gap he said gives manufacturers an incentive to mislead buyers.
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He pointed to Section 53 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, which allows penalties of up to Rs 10 lakh for misleading claims, but said this was an insufficient deterrent given the scale of profits involved.
He called for the "analogue paneer" category to be scrapped entirely in favour of a distinct, non-misleading name.
Chakraborty said clearer labelling would help restore consumer trust in dairy products.
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