MS Shanker
A chilling video has gone viral recently, exposing a bitter truth hiding behind India’s sweetest lies: several popular “apple juice” brands being sold in the market contain zero apple, and worse, are filled with toxic, synthetic chemicals that pose serious health risks. These brands, with flashy packaging and deceptive marketing, are particularly popular among teenagers and children. What they are drinking isn’t juice. It’s poison in a bottle. And yet, the regulatory watchdog — the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) — is missing in action.
The FSSAI was constituted to protect public health by regulating the manufacture, storage, distribution, sale, and import of food products. Its guidelines mandate that labels must list contents, proportions, and adhere to limits on additives and flavouring agents. A product only earns the FSSAI license number and logo once it meets these standards. So, the obvious question is — what happened here? Were these fruitless juices ever tested? If they were, how did they pass? And if they weren’t, who is asleep at the wheel?
According to market research by IMARC Group, India’s fruit juice market was valued at ₹17,800 crore (USD 2.1 billion) in 2023 and is expected to cross ₹28,000 crore by 2028. Among these, apple juice is one of the most consumed variants, making up roughly 20–25% of packaged juice sales. That’s ₹3,500–₹4,000 crore of sales, with no real apples in many of them! If this isn’t food fraud on an industrial scale, what is?
This isn’t the first time India’s food and beverage market has come under scrutiny. In 2020, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) found that most leading honey brands — including Dabur, Patanjali, Zandu, and Baidyanath — failed international purity tests, particularly the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) test conducted in Germany. Many of them had passed Indian labs but failed foreign scrutiny, revealing how easily local compliance can be manipulated.
The same trend is now emerging with juice products. Several so-called “apple juices” are nothing more than water, synthetic apple flavour, citric acid, artificial sweeteners, colourants, and preservatives. No fibre. No real fruit pulp. No nutrition.
Manufacturers have mastered the art of paper compliance — ensuring that documents tick the boxes, while the product inside the bottle remains dangerously substandard. Meanwhile, food safety inspectors — under-resourced, overburdened, and often politically pressured — are limited to visual checks and random sampling that rarely expose the real contents.
The FSSAI’s system allows pre-packaged food products to be marketed once the brand submits its label and claims for approval. But how many times do these approvals translate into actual lab tests? And how often are products randomly picked from shelves and subjected to rigorous, transparent lab analysis? Going by the current situation, the answer seems to be: rarely, if at all.
Some of us, along with our corporate colleagues, have filed petitions in the past against dubious food practices, including in the honey and juice sectors. But most of them have run aground in the bureaucratic quicksand. Years pass, officials get transferred, documents disappear, and cases are buried in dusty files.
Without deep pockets or political backing, ordinary citizens and small advocacy groups cannot pursue prolonged legal fights. That’s exactly what these corporations count on — the helplessness of the consumer and the complicity of a broken system.
It is time FSSAI stops acting like a rubber stamp and starts behaving like a true watchdog. Random and surprise testing of products should be the norm, not the exception. Offending companies must face criminal charges, not mere fines. Their licenses should be revoked, and their names made public. Parents and schools must be warned about these fake juices that are slowly damaging the health of the next generation.
Above all, consumers must wake up. Don’t fall for glossy ads. Read labels. Question brands. Demand transparency. Because what you see in the bottle might not just be juice — it could be your next health crisis in disguise.
It’s time to stop sipping lies. And start demanding accountability.
