UK Food Packaging

The little red, amber and green squares with calorie values can be found on every food product sold across the world in various forms, all to make everyone healthier. Along with these squares and percentages, there are various different ingredients and additives listed in lengthy columns, such as monosodium glutamate (E621), which seem to be used all over the place. As always, there are tight regulations behind the application of these labels on packaging, such as in the UK, which is the place which this blogpost will focus on today.

The government's guidance goes so far as specifying the font size to be used, and contains a fairly comprehensive list of what must be listed and what doesn't have to be listed. This includes rather expected things, such as allergens (including eggs, fish, nuts and molluscs) and ingredients used, with exceptions. (nano) on your packaging for example indicates that an ingredient used was an engineered nanomaterial, which apparently help to remove pollutants from water and increase food production whilst also perhaps causing side effects. Additives such as sweeteners, antioxidants, and preservatives that have an E number, which includes glycerol (E422), amaranth (E123), various caramels under E150, CaCO3 (E170) and gold (E175), and they're safe to consume depending on your food standards agency (Northern Ireland hate TiO2, for example (E171), but the rest of the UK doesn't really care), which is obviously reassuring!..

QUIDs (quantitative ingregients declarations) are also required on packaging - these are the tables of content that include what ingredients were used and the proportion of the ingredient used in relation to other ingredients, such as this one on a pack of breaded mushrooms. As evidenced here, you don't have to list all possible allergens in a lengthy list - UK retailers love to indicate them in bold. There are obviously exceptions, such as if the ingredient is barely used - you then don't have to advertise it on your QUID. Whilst not British, a similar American rule means Tic Tacs are apparently 0% sugar, when they're essentially pure sugar.

What about those coloured boxes then? Those are the Reference Intakes which include the energy intake from the product in either kJ or kcal (1 kilocalorie is 4184J - calories once related to the concept of having to raise the temperature of 1kg of water by 1℃ - that's now defined as the specific heat capacity of water - yet it's now synonymous with nutrition I guess). The colours in the squares obviously indicate whether the intake is too high or low compared with what you should be intaking (the breaded mushrooms have an example here) and the NHS have some guidelines on what is too high or too low here. It's always interesting to see products advertising how they're a great source of vitamins whilst having loads of sugar in comparison (and whilst the two aren't inherently contradictory to each other, I'm sure the companies want to come off as a healthy option at the same time).

You also need a "use by" or "best before" date (seen with the breaded mushrooms here) - the former is when there would be a health risk if you ate the product after the date, such as due to mould or the like. The latter doesn't mean that you'll die after eating it past the date (though to be fair, I don't think it's necessarily the same with "use by"), merely that it's not as good quality after that day. Selling food past its "use by" date is a criminal offence - not with a "best before" date. Interestingly enough, certain supermarkets have stopped including "use by" dates on products such as yoghurts, in an effort to tackle food waste.

Add in the location where the food was produced or grown, as well as how the food should be stored (such as in a cool, dark place), remembering to also include certain other information that might be useful (such as alcohol content and whether the food is vegan or not), all of which are rather self explanatory and you're seemingly good to go! That's British food packaging (mostly) explained.

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