Is Your Packaged Food the Same Worldwide? The Truth About Global Brand Differences

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A recent Reuters article points out that multinational food producers often make different versions of the same products to comply with local regulations, tastes and spending capacity. citing examples where the Indian versions of certain branded products are of lower quality:

Fanta ingredients, nutrition table in UK

Fanta soda retailed in India...contains artificial dye that is not present in the similarly-branded product sold in Britain.

Fanta in India; Images - Open Food Facts

Indian standard KitKats have ​4.5% cocoa solids, while the milk chocolate in the Australian version contains at least 22% cocoa. 

All variants of Nestle’s Maggi instant noodles sold in India are made with palm ​oil, whereas many versions sold in Britain use pricier sunflower oil. Many of the Maggi packets sold in Britain are made in India, but they carry red front-of-pack labels warning of their high salt content.

Nestle in 2024, for instance, announced it would start ​selling sugar-free Cerelac baby food in India. The company has long sold sugar-free Cerelac elsewhere.

The "Wikipedia of food," Open Food Facts, features nutritional details for over 4.7 million packaged food products (as of 2026) and provides data to compare the same product across different countries.

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