India accounts for nearly half of the world’s micronutrient-deficient population. While the country has made significant strides in addressing some micronutrient deficiencies, such as iron and iodine, Vitamin D deficiency remains an overlooked public health challenge. According to ICRIER-ANVKA Foundation 2025 report, titled, “Roadmap to Address Vitamin D Deficiency in India”, one in every five Indians are Vitamin D deficient. This is despite India receiving abundant sunshine throughout the year and the country being one of the world’s largest producers of several Vitamin D-rich foods (such as eggs, milk and fish).
To address Vitamin D deficiency, countries across the world have implemented effective food-fortification measures by selecting appropriate food vehicles tailored to national dietary habits, choosing the right form of Vitamin D (D₂ or D₃), implementing mandatory fortification policies, and ensuring adequate monitoring. In India, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has also taken steps to address Vitamin D deficiency. These include permitting voluntary fortification of edible oil and milk with Vitamin D and establishing the Food Fortification Resource Centre (FFRC) to provide technical assistance, guidance and capacity-building support for the adoption and scaling of food fortification efforts. In spite of these initiatives, there are some gaps in food fortification, such as only edible oil and milk are permitted to be fortified with Vitamin D, fortification is voluntary in nature and only plant-based source of Vitamin D are allowed. These limit the impact of food fortification in addressing Vitamin D deficiency.
This policy-brief outlines key action points that the FSSAI may undertake to support “Vitamin D Kuposhan Mukt Bharat”. These include permitting a wider range of products to be fortified with Vitamin D from both plant-based and animal-based sources, mandating fortification in select products, strengthening research and innovation in fortification, defining high fat sugar and salt (HFSS), raising awareness and building consumer trust, improving effective monitoring to enhance fortification impact, integrating fortified food into dietary guidelines, and providing capacity-building and training to MSMEs on fortification.
