Population growth, changing diets, and increased demand for pre-packaged foods and beverages present significant opportunities for the healthcare, food, and agribusiness sectors worldwide. Hong Kong is no exception.
The basic food law in Hong Kong is set out in the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance. The PHMSO states that any food sold or offered for sale should be fit for human consumption. The food offered or sold must also be of the nature, substance, and quality demanded by consumers. All food facts on labels should be true and non-misleading as to nature, substance or quality.
Basic labelling requirements:
All prepacked foods for sale in Hong Kong must comply with the requirements under the Food and Drugs (Composition and Labelling) Regulations.
The following information needs to be provided on the labels of pre-packaged food:
- Name of the food
- List of ingredients
- Presence of allergens
- List of additives
- Indication of use or the best before use date/durability indication in both Chinese and English language
- Statement of special conditions for storage/instructions for use
- Count, weight or volume of food
The Centre for Food Safety has guidelines for foods in Hong Kong, which food manufacturers, food service providers, and nutrition or diet consultants can use as a reference to provide truthful and informative labels in a consumer-friendly or client-friendly manner.
As per the labelling scheme guidelines for nutrition information, the nutrition labelling format has to present the nutrition information in a tabular format and place the nutrition label in an easy-to-notice place. Both standard format and horizontal format are acceptable.
Nutrition Facts Label Generation – Manually or Automatically?
Given the nutrition facts labeling bindings by the Hong Kong food regulatory, each food manufacturer, services provider, nutritionist and dietitian has to abide by the rules. Nutrition facts labels need to contain information about the food nutrients to enable consumers to make healthy dietary choices. However, coming up with nutrition facts labels manually, analysing the ingredients, and turning the product recipes into nutrition facts panels, calorie counts, vitamin content, etc. is laborious and time-consuming, and potentially may be prone to mistakes.
An alternative is to create nutrition facts panels more quickly and effortlessly by entering a list of ingredients and measurements, or by inputting ingredient and measurement data into an online nutrient analysis application. The application can use a nutritional database to calculate the nutritional content of a food item and generate food labels on the fly. One can customise the label format to the specifications of the clients’ or one’s own needs.
Also, it is a much easier and economical process to generate nutrition facts labels than getting lab analysis or doing it manually. To understand the difference between the two, review the FAQ section nutrition facts food labels.
What is the Smart Choice of a Nutrition Facts Labelling Application?
As you browse the web, you will come across numerous of these applications. Nutritionist Pro™ has been the top choice of users across food manufacturing, production facilities, consultants and various other sectors. It takes all the recipe information you input and calculates nutrient values and ingredient listings – to create Hong Kong labels in Chinese or Bilingual Chinese/English options. It then exports your completed labels to a file which you can print or save for future modifications.
Final Thought:
Nutritionist Pro™ is affordable, responsive, and jam-packed with features, making it the smart choice for nutrition facts label generation. It builds labels which meet China/Hong Kong labelling guidelines and is available in many label formats in English and/or traditional Chinese. Users can build unlimited recipes/formulas using its ingredient database.
To learn more about Nutritionist Pro™, please visit www.nutritionistpro.com
For additional information, kindly email: [email protected]