Guides to the Nutrition Facts label
Written for people who actually make the food — bakers, jam makers, granola producers, small-batch manufacturers — and who need the answer to be right rather than reassuring. Every rule here is cited to the paragraph of 21 CFR 101.9 it comes from, and every worked number is produced by the same calculation the label builder runs.
How to choose a serving size
The one number you are not allowed to pick. Reference amounts by product category, the density test for cereals and bulk foods, and the 50/67/200 percent rules for cookies, bars and cakes.
How to calculate added sugars
Total Sugars and Added Sugars are two different numbers with two different rules. The definition, the part of it that catches people out, and a worked granola recipe showing both figures.
FDA rounding rules, in one table
Calories to the nearest 5 or 10, sodium to the nearest 5 or 10 mg, and the two separate %Daily Value rules — including why iron of 8 mg prints as 45% and not 44%.
Calculating nutrition facts from a recipe
Weigh, look up, scale, sum, divide by the servings the batch yields, then round. Plus the cooking-loss mistake that quietly understates every nutrient per serving.
The nine allergens, and how to declare them
FALCPA's eight plus sesame, the two declaration methods the statute allows, and the rule most labels fail: naming the specific nut, fish or shellfish instead of the category.
What a nutrition analysis costs
An accredited lab's published price list line by line, why a full panel is $1,595, what a lab cannot measure at all — and the route 21 CFR 101.9 accepts instead.
Do you need a nutrition label?
The federal small-business exemption, the sales thresholds that define it, and the one thing that voids it — plus what still has to be on the package either way.
How these guides are written
Three commitments, because a page about compliance has to be held to a higher standard than a page about baking:
- Rules are quoted from the regulation, not summarized from memory. Where this site paraphrases, it links the paragraph. Where the regulation is ambiguous — and parts of it are — the guide says so rather than picking an answer for you.
- Worked examples are computed, not written. The granola example across these guides is calculated from USDA FoodData Central values through the same code the label builder uses, so the arithmetic in the article and the arithmetic in the product cannot drift apart.
- Where a warning is warranted, it is given. Compliance depends on things no calculator controls: your serving size has to follow the reference amount for your product category, some products need analysis rather than calculation, and a claim raises the bar for everything else.
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