Burden of Disease Costs Related to Sugar, Salt, and Fat Behind Nutri-Level Labelling Rules
Director of Non-Communicable Diseases at the Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, stated that the increasing trend in financing burdens for diseases related to sugar, salt, and fat (GGL) consumption was a key consideration in issuing the nutri-level labelling regulation for packaged drinks and foods.
“This is a risk factor. If we refer to the World Health Organization (WHO) and various scientific journals, excessive consumption of sugar, salt, and fat (GGL) will cause obesity, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension,” Siti Nadia told Tempo on Monday, 20 April 2026.
According to Siti, if someone is affected by these three diseases, combined with unhealthy consumption patterns and irregular treatment, that person will suffer from kidney disease, stroke, and heart conditions.
“This is education to know the GGL levels in the food and drinks we consume,” she said. “So it is hoped that there will be behavioural changes for us to be cautious and limit or control our GGL consumption according to our needs.”
Siti Nadia also provided data on the increasing trend of non-communicable diseases caused by excessive GGL consumption. Based on the December 2025 report on the management of the National Health Insurance (JKN) programme, there was an increase in the JKN financing burden from 2019 to 2025 related to those chronic diseases.
The three diseases linked to excessive GGL consumption occupy positions in the top four of the JKN financing burden. Heart disease holds the first position with a cost increase of 68.8% from Rp10.28 trillion in 2019 to Rp17.35 trillion in 2025.
The second position is occupied by kidney failure, from Rp2.32 trillion in 2019 to Rp13.38 trillion in 2025, or a 476.2% surge. The third highest is cancer, from Rp3.81 trillion in 2019 rising to Rp10.31 trillion in 2025, or a 170.2% increase.
In the fourth position, stroke burdens the JKN financing with Rp2.55 trillion in 2019 becoming Rp7.21 trillion in 2025, or a 182.9% surge.
The Ministry of Health, together with the Food and Drug Supervisory Agency (BPOM), began implementing the nutri-level labelling system for sweetened beverage products on 14 April 2026. This policy aims to make it easier for the public to identify nutritional content in daily consumed foods.
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said that with this policy, the public is expected to control sugar consumption independently, thus avoiding risks of diabetes, hypertension, and other diseases. “The hope is that the public can be educated and choose what is good to consume and what should be reduced,” he said at the Launch of Nutrition Labels at the Health Human Resources Building, Jakarta, on Tuesday, 14 April 2026.
Budi stated that this labelling applies to packaged processed drinks as well as ready-to-eat ones. For packaged drinks, the implementation of sugar content labelling will be supervised and regulated in more detail by BPOM as the authority for processed products. Meanwhile, ready-to-eat foods will be directly monitored by the Ministry of Health.
Nutri-Level is a classification system for food or drinks based on sugar, salt, and fat content. Budi mentioned that in the initial stage, the government will only regulate the application of nutri-level labels for beverage products.
The government divides the sugar content levels of beverage products into four levels marked with specific colours and letters. These include level A (dark green) for very healthy drinks with sugar content less than 1 gram, meaning no added sweeteners. Then, level B (light green) for the healthy category with sugar content less than 1-5 grams, level C (yellow) for the less healthy category with 5-10 grams of sugar content, and level D (red) for the unhealthy category with more than 10 grams of sugar.