The Subtle Art Of Legally Cheating: Food Companies And Their Misleading Marketing

Aniket Jana, Jogesh Chandra Chaudhury Law College, Calcutta University

ABSTRACT

The history of advertisement is as old as the first commercial exchange started in human civilization. Be it the screaming in the markets in the age old days or going door to door to promote their products in recent past to the new era of digital marketing and advertisements. On top of that after the major economic reforms of India in the early nineties, which pivoted the underlying strong idea of Individualization and Nationalization to opening doors for globalization, the digital advertising industry and the big Multinational Companies did their best to capture the market. Over the years, the companies have done many different and creative ways to advertise their products, and on doing those campaigns have somewhat mislead the public. This article focuses on the different false and misleading advertisements that different food product companies have made and how India’s Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSAI) dealt with some of them, how the authority is silent on many misleading and subtle false claims which layman could not identify on their own. The article will also focus on some comparative studies of other countries from which Indian Food Authority could take note.

Keywords: Digital Advertisement, Marketing, Food Companies, FSSAI, False Representation