With the Countdown Now on Until Nutri Labelling Becomes Law, it's Time to Call in the Experts

Come Christmas, if you’re not including nutritional information on your labelling, you may be breaking the law because this December new legislation comes into effect meaning that all providers of pre-packed foods must include nutri data on pack. With less than five months to go, calculating the calorific value of every item in your offering – not to mention the quantities of fat, saturates, carbs and more – may feel like ‘Nutrition Impossible’, but panic not as labelling experts Planglow are here to help!

What's Happening?
The legislation - which comes into effect on the 13th December 2016 - forms the second phase of the EU’s Food Information Regulation (FIR) and, while our current position in Europe may be in flux, the directive remains law. The FIRs were initially introduced in 2011 - their aim: to simplify the hugely varied and often misleading food labelling being produced throughout the UK and Europe. They set about tackling this sticky issue with a set of rules that made it much easier for consumers to read and understand what was actually in their food.

Phase one became law in December 2014. It covered everything from the layout and size of text on labelling to banishing misleading statements and images. Perhaps most importantly, it became a legal requirement for all food providers to communicate the presence of 14 potential allergens within their food products - ingredients that in extreme cases can kill. Now December 2016 is nearly upon us and for some providers this means yet further changes to come.

How Does This Affect Me?
For providers making products fresh on site or selling foods through an off-premises outlet (such as a van) nothing further is set to change at this stage. This said, if you:
- Are making a nutrition and / or health claim about a product
And / Or
- Would like to add nutritional information to your products anyway
You must follow the rules outlined for pre-packaged food providers (below) and do so in full otherwise you will be breaking the law. This applies to all providers looking to apply nutri data to products ahead of the December deadline regardless of whether your items are freshly made or pre-packaged.

For those working in the prepacked market a MANDATORY DECLARATION must be added to your products. Typically this would be on the back of pack where there is more space though any surface is acceptable as long as the data appears in the same field of vision. This is to avoid cherry picking information for the front of pack that could otherwise mislead consumers.

The MANDATORY DECLARATION must state (in this order and given unit(s) of measurement):
- Energy value (in both kilojoules (kJ) and kilocalories (kcal))
- The quantity (in grams (g)) of fat, saturates, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt

In addition to the MANDATORY DECLARATION you can also state (in grams only) the quantities of one or more nutrients from the VOLUNTARY SUPPLEMENTARY DECLARATION as well. These include: mono-unsaturates, polyunsaturates, polyols, starch and fibre - plus some vitamins and minerals too. Where health and / or nutrition claims are made about a product the relevant nutrient (e.g. ‘high in fibre’) must be included in both the Reference Intakes (RIs) - as a percentage - and as an absolute amount too.

Providers should also be mindful that
• As previously mentioned, nuti data needs to appear in the same field of vision. This said providers are able to replicate information on the front of pack but in one of two ways only. Either:
- Energy value (in both kilojoules (kJ) and kilocalories (kcal))
Or
- Energy value (in both kilojoules (kJ) and kilocalories (kcal)) + the quantity (in grams (g)) of fat, saturates, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt
• Sodium cannot be stated in place of salt as this can be misleading. However, providers are required to highlight on pack if a product is low in salt and may address if a high salt content is due to high levels of naturally occurring sodium
• Cholesterol and trans- fats cannot be declared
• Mandatory and / as appropriate supplementary declarations need to appear in the order as shown in the table on the right
• The text on labelling should go no smaller than 1.2mm or around 6.5 points

How Planglow Can Help
Planglow has been providing specialist labelling software to the catering industry for 30 years. What’s more, with a customer service team, five dedicated regional account managers and a technical support team with 50+ years combined industry expertise, we offer truly outstanding support. From help finding the right label to setting up bespoke labelling templates, we’re only ever a phone call away and more than happy to drop in should you need some additional and / or on-site assistance.

We currently offer three ways to help you create nutri labelling for your products: LabelLogic; NutriLogic + LabelLogic combined; LabelLogic Live.

Our NutriLogic & LabelLogic programs work together to help you simply and easily create your own nutritional labelling using a PC and a standard desktop printer. NutriLogic does the tricky bit for you so all you have to do is create your recipes in NutriLogic and this automatically calculates and updates the FIR compliant nutritional and ingredients box in LabelLogic ready for you to use on-pack. Working with NutriLogic and LabelLogic also allows you to create a custom nutrition box should you wish to highlight additional information outside of the standard box. While LabelLogic includes an AutoAllergen function which automatically bolds 14 of the most common potential allergens in your ingredients list. Alternatively you can simply use LabelLogic to manually input your nutritional information directly into the nutritional box.

Launched this spring LabelLogic Live is our latest labelling software solution and it combines both NutriLogic and LabelLogic in one easy to use application. It is a multi-award winning application that runs on any internet connected device (laptop, phone, tablet, home computer – Mac and PC - etc.) and a standard desktop printer. LabelLogic Live makes it even easier to create recipes and ingredients thanks to a built in recipe builder which automatically calculates and creates fully FIR compliant labelling. What’s more, because LabelLogic Live is fully web based – the only cloud based application now available on the market - it automatically updates in line with industry changes and software updates – so there is no need to run any upgrades or installations to stay compliant. Created to meet the ever changing needs of modern foodservice operators, it is flexible, intuitive and easy-to-use.

LabelLogic Live offers a number of other advantages when creating nutritional labelling too:
• Our improved product management enables you to build recipes and add product related information all on one easy to use page
• You can change the criteria for Reference Intakes (per cake, per slice, per 100g and so on) in a single click
• QR codes, text and images are all quick and easy to add: use to highlight promotions, special messaging and other information
• Once products have been created and saved in the recipe builder, you can run reports to provide to your trading standard authority or to analyse the nutritional content of your products
• Allows users to create bespoke labelling from stock designs
• Multi-site operators can create, rollout and lock down data and templates to ensure consistency across all sites
• Hosted on Amazon’s leading cloud infrastructure user’s data is always accessible and always secure

Further functions and tools will be added to LabelLogic Live in the future as well as the application continues to evolve in line with the catering industry - watch this space for updates!