The basic food ingredient labeling requirements
- Order: heaviest ingredient first, lightest last, by weight, not by volume
- Names: the common or usual name, and a specific one. "Canola oil", not "oil"
- Water you add is an ingredient and is listed by weight like any other
- On labels, "sugar" means sucrose from sugar cane or sugar beets. Other sweeteners use their own names
- Place: on the principal display panel or the information panel
- Size: no letter smaller than 1/16 inch
- A food with a single ingredient, like honey or plain coffee beans, needs no ingredient list
Ingredients that have their own ingredients
Chocolate chips, butter, enriched flour and other compound ingredients can be declared two ways:
| Method | How it looks | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Name with parentheses | Semisweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, milkfat, soy lecithin, vanilla extract) | Most common. Sub-ingredients in their own order by weight |
| Break it out | Each component (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter...) merged into the main list at its total weight | When the same components already appear elsewhere in your list |
- Fats and oils are named one by one. A blend may be shown as "blend of vegetable oils (soybean oil, palm oil)"
- Leavening, yeast nutrients, dough conditioners and firming agents may use a group name with the parts in parentheses: "leavening (baking soda, monocalcium phosphate)"
- Some dairy and egg forms may use a short name: dried whey as "whey", liquid whole eggs as "eggs"
The 2 percent rule
Ingredients at 2% or less of the food by weight may leave the strict order. List them at the end after a phrase like "Contains 2% or less of: salt, baking soda, vanilla extract".
- The threshold may be 2%, 1.5%, 1% or 0.5%
- No ingredient after the phrase may be above the stated threshold
- If you show an ingredient's percentage, it goes in parentheses after its name, rounded to the nearest 1%
Spices, flavors, colors and preservatives
| Ingredient type | How to name it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Spices | "Spice", or the name of the spice | Spices, or cinnamon |
| Dried vegetables used for flavor | By name. These count as food, not "spice" | Garlic powder, onion powder, celery powder |
| Flavors | "Natural flavor" or "artificial flavor" | Natural flavor |
| Salt and MSG | Always by name | Salt, monosodium glutamate |
| Certified colors | By name, "FD&C" and "No." may be dropped; lakes say "Lake" | Red 40, Blue 1 Lake |
| Colors exempt from certification | "Artificial color", "color added", or "colored with" plus the name | Color added |
| Chemical preservatives | Name plus what it does | Ascorbic acid (to promote color retention) |
- A protein hydrolysate used for flavor can't hide behind "natural flavor". It needs its own name
- If a flavor, color or spice blend carries one of the 9 major allergens, the allergen must still be declared
What you can leave off the list
Incidental additives present at insignificant levels with no function in the finished food are exempt:
- Carryover: a substance that worked in an ingredient but does nothing in your food
- Processing aids that are removed before packaging, or that become normal parts of the food
- Substances that migrate from equipment or packaging
Two limits: sulfites at 10 ppm or more in the finished food must be listed, and an allergen is never exempt as an incidental additive.
Example: a chocolate chip cookie
Ingredients: Semisweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, milkfat, soy lecithin, vanilla extract), enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), butter (cream, salt), brown sugar, sugar, eggs, baking soda, vanilla extract (vanilla bean extractives in water, alcohol), salt. Contains: Milk, Egg, Wheat, Soy.
- Chocolate chips come first: 2 cups of chips weigh more than 2 1/4 cups of flour
- Brown sugar and sugar are separate ingredients, so each gets its own spot. "Sugar" is the white sucrose
- Compound ingredients show their parts in parentheses
- Soy hides in the soy lecithin of the chips, and milk in "butter (cream, salt)". The Contains line names both
Our tool writes this list from your recipe: it works out the weight of every ingredient, sorts by weight, adds the sub-ingredients and builds the Contains line.