Update your Nutrition Facts label ASAP

New FDA Rules to go into Effect this Year

The deadline to comply with the new FDA nutrition facts label is fast approaching! If you are a Cannabis company manufacturing (or selling, if you like to be extra informed) a food or food supplement product that people consume via eating or drinking, get ready for an important info-dump. 

Announced way back in 2016, the new required update to FDA nutrition facts labels will go live on 1/1/2020 for all companies making over 10 million. Companies making more less than 10 million have an extra year to comply. 

Are your product labels ready? If not, don’t panic. We break down the changes to requirements here.  Our friends over at ImageTek Labels wrote a detailed post on the coming update. They listed the “major” changes to requirements as such:

• New label design to highlight calories and serving sizes
• Removal of “Calories from Fat”
• Added sugars now required on label
• Updated Daily Values for several nutrients like Sodium,
• Dietary Fiber, Vitamin D
• Vitamins and Minerals amounts required on label
• Changes in required nutrients (Vitamin D & Potassium) versus no longer required (Vitamin A and C)
• Definition of fiber and allowable fibers
• Changes to Reference Amounts Customarily Consumed (RACCs) and serving sizes
• Dual Column label for packages that contain 200% and up to and including 300% of the standard serving size

So, your editing will include some text bolding, italicizing, and one or two deletions. Nothing to get stressed about. Some other key takeaways? The birds-eye view here is that the FDA is steering labels to reflect modern nutrition science and also how modern people eat. While one could argue that nobody should consume a 42 ounce soda in one sitting, many people do actually choose to live like that. Thus, the FDA wants all food and food supplement labels to be accurate in accordance with how people consume. Fun fact: the labels were last updated in 1933! We’d say it’s about time for a spruce-up. 

Need more data to guide your label edits? Here are the new rules directly from the U.S. Government, and here is a more general guide to food labels via Imagetek.

Need to update your labels, or just looking for a totally fresh look?  Drop us a line!