10 Crucial Items That Must be Present on your Food Labels
When it comes to labelling packaged food, a good and informative label is very important. Whether it’s in a Hotel/Café, Aged Care/Health Care Facility, or A Food Service Manufacturer; they all require an Excellent Nutrition Label Printer that not only helps them to input the right information for their chosen item, but also helps to improve efficiencies in food labelling.
While designing the label to be printed, you should keep in mind that the label must contain all possible information about the food packaging being labelled. Choosing a Food Labelling Printer is an Important Purchase Because: –
- The Food Label should contain information that helps to cover all Food Safety Regulations.
- The Food Label should contain information which informs the consumer of allergens/additives that be found in the product.
- The Food Label may assist the consumer to make an informed purchase between similar products available in the market.
- The Food Labels should also contain information about storing of the food item, use by dates and in some cases it’s ingredients.
In Aged Care Facilities, Labels are an important tool to inform the Resident & Staff of what the item is and the very important use by date. The Nutrition Label Printer ensure you achieve these objectives.
Not every Label is the same, so to help you know what your Label should carry, we have listed 10 important criteria’s that might need to be included on your Food Safety Label: –
- Technical name and description of the Food or Beverage item You need to add the technical name of the product on the label and if the product name doesn’t actually describe what the product is, you will need to provide the complete description of the product.
- The volume or the net weight of the Food item The net weight of the food inside the packaging should be stated because after packaging the weight increases but that is not the actual weight of the product. Especially for canned foods, the weight of the contents is what needs to be shown.
- Dates for Packaging The date of manufacturing and the date of expiry should be stated on the Food Label. There are two ways of doing it: Use by dates, which are found on the perishable items such as dairy, fresh meats, eggs etc. this states that the product should be consumed by a use by date i.e 17/03/2023 Best Before Dates are stated on other dry items like cereals, flour, biscuits, canned foods etc. and lets the consumer know when the item should be consumed by a best before date i.e 15/01/2024 Listing The Ingredients After the food product is packed, the Label should include all the ingredients of the food product manufactured.
- Panel for Nutritional Information Apart from the ingredients mentioned, a separate nutritional panel is to provide information about the total calories, carbohydrates, fats, sugars and other nutritional information about the product.
- Allergy warning If the food contains any potential allergens/additives, the Label should state what they are.
- Country of Origin So many foods these days are manufactured in other Countries, the name of the Country is to be shown on the label.
- Storage The label should show the the use by date once the Packaging of the Product has been opened. That information may also need to state if the product requires refrigeration after opening.
- Complete details about the manufacturer The name, local address, telephone number and email of the manufacturer must be stated on the food label.
- Batch No. Last but not least, the lot and batch number of the item should be included. This information helps when there is a problem with a particular batch of food product produced. If the batch number is known, the supplied food products can be recalled back.
It is very difficult to add all these details on the label manually, thus the nutrition label printer helps Facilities to create informative labels explicatively to their food products.
