Which fat is in the pack?
The ingredient list has to name the fat. I read 1,917 Indian ingredient lists that name one and sorted them: palm oil, another named plant oil, a dairy fat, or just "vegetable oil".
Quick answers
Which fat is in most Indian packaged foods?
Palm oil. Of the 1,917 Indian packaged foods whose ingredient list names a fat or oil (plain oils, ghee, flours, spices and tea left out), 51% name palm oil, palmolein, palm kernel oil or palm fat. The next most common named oils are rice bran (10%) and sunflower (9%). 16% use only a dairy fat such as butter or ghee.
Which foods use palm oil most?
Instant noodles (88%), biscuits (81%), chips (77%) and namkeen (66%). Sauces and spreads use it least (8%), because most of them use soybean or rice bran oil.
Why does the kind of oil matter?
Palm oil is about half saturated fat: 49 g in 100 g, against about 10 g in sunflower oil (USDA). Palm kernel oil is 82 g. WHO advises adults to keep saturated fat under 10% of daily energy, about 22 g a day on a 2,000 kcal diet. Food companies use palm oil because it is cheap, stays solid at room temperature and does not need hydrogenation, so a biscuit made with it is crisp and has little trans fat.
Can I always tell which oil is in the pack?
No. 8% of these lists say only "vegetable oil", "edible oil" or "refined oil" and never name the plant. In cakes and bakery it is 19%. Some lists say "one or more of: palmolein, rice bran, cottonseed", so the oil can change from batch to batch.
What about vanaspati and hydrogenated fat?
15% of the lists name a hydrogenated, interesterified or shortening fat. It is most common in chocolate and confectionery (36%) and biscuits (28%). Since 1 January 2022 India caps industrial trans fat at 2% of the fat in any food, so the word hydrogenated no longer means a lot of trans fat. It does usually mean more saturated fat than a liquid oil.
How much palm oil does India use?
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, and the Solvent Extractors' Association expects about 9.3 million tonnes in 2025-26 (Business Standard, November 2025).
Every fat, by category
| Category | Lists naming a fat | Palm | Other named plant oil only | Dairy fat only | Unnamed vegetable oil | Hydrogenated or shortening |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instant noodles and pasta | 88 | 88% | 6% | 1% | 4% | 1% |
| Biscuits and cookies | 331 | 81% | 4% | 9% | 5% | 28% |
| Chips and crisps | 157 | 77% | 17% | 1% | 4% | 1% |
| Namkeen and savoury snacks | 96 | 66% | 22% | 2% | 8% | 5% |
| Cakes and bakery | 161 | 45% | 27% | 8% | 19% | 12% |
| Ice cream and frozen desserts | 65 | 45% | 25% | 29% | 0% | 9% |
| Breakfast cereals and muesli | 60 | 37% | 53% | 8% | 2% | 5% |
| Chocolate and confectionery | 180 | 27% | 6% | 60% | 4% | 36% |
| Sauces, ketchup and spreads | 160 | 8% | 56% | 27% | 7% | 12% |
The other named oils
| Oil | Share of the 1,917 lists |
|---|---|
| Rice bran oil | 9.6% |
| Sunflower oil | 9.2% |
| Cottonseed oil | 5.6% |
| Soybean oil | 4.6% |
| Coconut oil | 3.1% |
| Corn oil | 2.8% |
| Groundnut oil | 2.5% |
| Sesame oil | 1.4% |
The rules I used
Palm = the words palm oil, palmolein, palm kernel oil, palm stearin or palm fat anywhere in the ingredient list, including inside brackets such as "edible vegetable oil (palm)". Palm sugar, palm jaggery and vitamin A palmitate do not count. A named plant oil = sunflower, rice bran, soybean, mustard, groundnut, coconut, olive, cottonseed, canola, corn, sesame or safflower, written as the oil or as the plant inside a bracket after the word oil. Dairy fat = butter, ghee, cream or milk fat. Unnamed = the list says only vegetable, edible or refined oil or fat, or vanaspati, shortening or hydrogenated oil, and never names a plant or a dairy fat.
Saturated fat values are USDA FoodData Central: palm oil, palm kernel oil, sunflower oil. The 10% limit is the WHO guideline on saturated and trans fat (2023). The trans fat cap is FSSAI's 2021 regulation, in force from 1 January 2022 (Business Standard, USDA FAS). Import figures: Business Standard on SEA data.
What this can't tell you
- A name in the list does not say how much of that fat is in the pack. Read the nutrition table for total and saturated fat.
- Lists that say "one or more of the following oils" are counted as naming each oil listed, so the pack in your hand may hold only one of them.
- The data is from Open Food Facts, filled in by volunteers. It is not a random sample of every pack in India.
- It covers categories, not brands, and rates no product.
Data and code: https://github.com/devnarsinghani22/india-label-index (fats.py). See also If FSSAI's warning labels started today, where added fat is one of the three warning triggers. Part of the India Label Index 2026.
Narsinghani, D. (2026). Which fat is in the pack? India Label Index 2026. https://devnarsinghani22.github.io/india-label-index/palm-oil/. Data from Open Food Facts (ODbL).