Indian chips are about 23 times as likely as British chips to list palm oil
I put Indian packs next to the same foods sold in the UK, the US, Europe and beyond, all from one open database. Chips (the packet kind, which the British call crisps) stood out most: 78% of Indian chips list palm oil (124 of 159 packs). In the UK it is 3.3% (46 of 1,380).
Quick answers
Do Indian chips use more palm oil than chips abroad?
Yes, by far. Of 159 Indian chips packs whose ingredient list is in English and names a fat or oil, 124 (78%) list palm oil or palmolein (the liquid part of palm oil, the name most Indian packs use). In the UK it is 3.3% (46 of 1,380), in the US 7.6% (211 of 2,779), in Canada 6.1% (22 of 359) and in Australia 6.7% (15 of 225). So an Indian pack is about 23 times as likely as a British one to list palm oil. Open Food Facts' own palm oil tag, which reads labels in any language, shows the same gap: 83% in India (113 of 136 packs) against 3.1% to 21% in the 8 other countries with at least 100 tagged packs (counts in the table below).
What do chips abroad use instead?
Mostly sunflower oil and rapeseed oil (also called canola). Of 1,380 British chips lists that name a fat, 72% name sunflower oil and 47% rapeseed oil. Of 2,779 US lists, 72% name sunflower, 52% canola and 45% corn oil. Of 159 Indian lists, the most named oils after palm are rice bran (20%) and sunflower (15%). Many lists name more than one oil, and a list that says "sunflower and/or canola oil" counts for both.
Do Indian chips have more saturated fat?
Yes, on these labels. The median Indian chips pack (the middle one: half have more, half have less) has 13.8 g of saturated fat in 100 g, from 58 packs with a nutrition table. British chips have 2.4 g (1,773 packs) and US chips 3.6 g (1,023 packs). Palm oil is about half saturated fat: 49 g in 100 g, against about 10 g in sunflower oil (USDA). This data shows the gap, not what causes it: packs also differ in how much fat they hold, and only 8 Indian packs that do not list palm oil have a saturated fat value, too few to compare with the ones that do. WHO advises adults to keep saturated fat under 10% of daily energy, about 22 g a day on a 2,000 kcal diet. A 50 g pack at the Indian median has about 7 g, nearly a third of that.
Is it the same for instant noodles?
Instant noodles use palm oil almost everywhere. Open Food Facts tags palm oil in 95% of Indian instant noodles (81 of 85 packs), against 67% in the UK (137 of 203), 76% in the US (146 of 193), 78% in France (591 of 760) and 77% in Germany (277 of 362). India is higher, but the big gap is in chips.
Do Indian packs have more additives?
Additives are the items a label lists with a code number, such as "emulsifier (INS 322)". India writes these codes as INS numbers; Europe writes the same codes as E numbers (E322). In the same food, yes. 45% of Indian biscuits list 5 or more additives (158 of 350 packs), the most of the 12 countries with enough data. The UK is 21% (337 of 1,612) and the US 33% (3,652 of 11,231). For instant noodles it is 82% in India (80 of 97), 47% in the UK (106 of 227) and 64% in the US (146 of 229). Across all packaged foods (baby food and supplements left out), 19% of Indian packs with an ingredient list have 5 or more additives (958 of 5,159), against 13% in the UK (61,585 packs), 10% in France (363,226), 8.9% in Germany (123,174) and 18% in the US (444,380). That mix holds different foods in each country, so the same-food numbers are the fairer test.
Why is India different?
This data shows what the labels say, not why. For context, India is the world's largest importer of edible oil. It brought in 7.58 million tonnes of palm oil in the 2024-25 oil year (Solvent Extractors' Association data, via Business Standard).
Every country
| Country | Chips naming palm | Chips, palm tag | Chips, saturated fat in 100 g (median) | Instant noodles, palm tag | 5+ additives, all foods | 5+ additives, biscuits | 5+ additives, instant noodles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| India | 78% (159) | 83.1% (136) | 13.8 g (58) | 95.3% (85) | 18.6% (5,159) | 45.1% (350) | 82.5% (97) |
| UK | 3.3% (1,380) | 3.1% (1,280) | 2.4 g (1,773) | 67.5% (203) | 13.1% (61,585) | 20.9% (1,612) | 46.7% (227) |
| US | 7.6% (2,779) | 9.2% (2,033) | 3.6 g (1,023) | 75.6% (193) | 18.1% (444,380) | 32.5% (11,231) | 63.8% (229) |
| France | 6.7% (3,062) | 2.8 g (5,628) | 77.8% (760) | 10.3% (363,226) | 17.7% (13,535) | 59.8% (905) | |
| Germany | 9.5% (1,186) | 2.6 g (1,826) | 76.5% (362) | 8.9% (123,174) | 11.6% (2,903) | 61.8% (401) | |
| Spain | 5.5% (712) | 3.5 g (1,838) | 13.5% (50,659) | 21.2% (2,183) | |||
| Italy | 20.7% (328) | 2.9 g (625) | 5.4% (35,429) | 9% (2,068) | |||
| Canada | 6.1% (359) | 13.6% (162) | 3 g (691) | 16% (21,129) | 20.7% (507) | ||
| Australia | 6.7% (225) | 11.3% (115) | 2.5 g (116) | 18.4% (14,351) | 31.2% (285) | ||
| Mexico | 5.7 g (205) | 19.5% (7,576) | 37.4% (420) | ||||
| Brazil | 9.8% (7,021) | 12.3% (253) | |||||
| Chile | 22.8% (2,120) | 39.8% (133) | |||||
| South Africa | 20.4% (1,833) | ||||||
| Singapore | 14.6% (1,271) | ||||||
| UAE | 14.5% (806) | ||||||
| Indonesia | 3.2% (1,495) |
How I did it
- Source: Open Food Facts, one download read on 6 October 2026, for India and 15 other countries. A product counts for every country it is tagged as sold in.
- Same food, same tags in every country. Chips = the Open Food Facts categories crisps, potato crisps, potato chips, corn chips, extruded snacks and tortilla chips. Instant noodles = instant noodles only, with no dry pasta mixed in. Biscuits = biscuits or cookies. (The palm oil study's chips figure uses India's wider chips category, so it differs a little.)
- Palm in the list uses the rules of Which fat is in the pack?: palm oil, palm fruit oil, palmolein (also misspelt ones such as palmolien), palm kernel oil or palm fat. Palm sugar, palm jaggery, palmyra, palmitate (also when misspelt, such as "ascorbyl palmate") and the palm fruit itself do not count. Only lists in English that name a fat or oil are read, so this test covers India, the UK, the US, Canada and Australia. A list counts as English when it is in plain English letters (a stray accent or symbol is fine) or uses at least two everyday English ingredient words, so packs that print English next to Hindi, French or Arabic are read too.
- Named oils: a list that says "sunflower, safflower and/or canola oil" counts for all three.
- The palm oil tag is Open Food Facts' own reading of the list, in any language. Products it marks as may contain or unknown are left out. I use it for every country and for instant noodles.
- Saturated fat comes from the nutrition table, per 100 g. Additives are Open Food Facts' count of the coded additives in the list. It reads India's INS numbers too: of 1,228 Indian lists that use INS numbers, it counted fewer than half of them in only 9.
- The 159 Indian chips lists come from about 58 brands, counting different spellings of one brand name once (12 lists have no brand filled in). The biggest brand is 16% of them (25 of 159). Leave it out and the palm share is still 78% (104 of 134). Packs tagged as sold only in India give 78% (109 of 140).
- Saturated fat values for oils are USDA FoodData Central: palm oil, sunflower oil. The 10% limit is the WHO guideline on saturated and trans fat (2023). Import figures: Business Standard on SEA data.
- Every share is rounded once, from its count. Corrected on 8 October 2026, the day it went up: the all-foods additive share now covers every food (it first covered 22 food groups), it now reads lists that carry a stray accent or a second language, counts "palm fruit oil" as palm oil and "sunflower and/or canola oil" as two oils, and every number shows its count. Later that day: one Canadian chips list that names "ascorbyl palmate", a misspelling of ascorbyl palmitate, no longer counts as naming palm oil, so Canada went from 6.4% (23 of 359) to 6.1% (22 of 359).
What this can't tell you
- Open Food Facts is filled in by volunteers. No country's numbers here are a random sample of its shops, and countries differ a lot in how many products people have added: 363,226 French packs have an additive count, against 5,159 Indian ones.
- Only 58 Indian chips packs have a saturated fat value, so that median could move as more are added.
- A list that names palm oil does not say how much of it is in the pack.
- The all-foods additive share mixes different foods in each country. The same-food rows (biscuits, instant noodles) are the fairer test. A count of additives says nothing about whether any one additive is safe.
- It covers categories, not brands, and rates no product.
Data and code
- Every Open Food Facts number on this page, with the count behind it (CSV) and the full results (JSON)
- Code: https://github.com/devnarsinghani22/india-label-index (world.py, with self-tests for the palm and oil matchers in world.py and fats.py)
- Licence: the data comes from Open Food Facts under the Open Database License. You can reuse these numbers with credit to Open Food Facts and this page.
See also Which fat is in the pack?, the India-only study of which fat Indian packs name. Part of the India Label Index 2026.
Narsinghani, D. (2026). India vs the world. India Label Index 2026. https://devnarsinghani22.github.io/india-label-index/india-vs-world/. Data from Open Food Facts (ODbL).