Making a nutrition facts label requires getting accurate nutritional data for your product, formatting it to meet FDA specifications, and following strict rules about rounding, serving sizes, and which nutrients to include. The process has more steps than most new food entrepreneurs expect, but each one is straightforward once you understand what’s required.
What Must Appear on the Label
The current FDA label format requires these mandatory components, listed in this exact order from top to bottom: servings per container, serving size, calories, total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrate, dietary fiber, total sugars (with added sugars indented beneath), protein, vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium. Each nutrient except trans fat and total sugars needs a percent Daily Value (%DV) listed on the right side.
The percent Daily Value tells consumers how much of their daily allotment one serving provides. These percentages are calculated from fixed reference numbers: 78 grams for total fat, 2,300 milligrams for sodium, and 28 grams for dietary fiber, for example. If your product has 6 grams of fiber per serving, you’d calculate 6 รท 28 = 21% DV.
Added sugars get special treatment. The label must show “Includes Xg Added Sugars” indented under total sugars, with both a gram amount and a %DV. Added sugars include any sugar introduced during processing: table sugar, honey, syrups, and concentrated fruit or vegetable juices. Naturally occurring sugars in milk, fruits, and vegetables don’t count. If your yogurt has 15 grams of total sugars and 7 of those grams come from added sweeteners, the label shows 15g for total sugars with “Includes 7g Added Sugars” beneath it. Single-ingredient sweeteners like pure maple syrup or honey follow a slightly different format, where the gram amount and %DV for added sugars can appear in a footnote.
How to Get Your Nutritional Data
You have two main options for determining the nutrient values on your label: laboratory analysis or database calculation. The FDA recommends lab analysis as the gold standard, specifically using methods validated by the Association of Official Analytical Chemists International. You send samples of your finished product to a food testing lab, and they return a full nutrient breakdown. This typically costs $500 to $1,500 per product, depending on how many nutrients are tested.
The alternative is using nutrition database software, which calculates your product’s nutritional profile from its ingredient list and recipe. You enter each ingredient and its quantity, and the software pulls nutrient data from established databases (like the USDA’s) to generate a label. This is cheaper and faster, but less precise, especially for products that undergo significant cooking or processing that changes nutrient availability.
Regardless of which method you choose, the FDA holds you responsible for the accuracy of your label. The rules are strict: nutrients added to a product (like fortified vitamins) must be present at 100% or more of the declared value. Naturally occurring nutrients like fiber, protein, and minerals must be present at 80% or more of what the label states. For nutrients you want to minimize, like sodium or fat, the actual amount can’t exceed the labeled value by more than 20%. If your label says 200mg of sodium, lab testing can’t find more than 240mg.
Determining Your Serving Size
You don’t get to pick your serving size freely. The FDA publishes Reference Amounts Customarily Consumed (RACCs), which are fixed reference amounts for nearly every food category. Your labeled serving size must be based on the RACC for your product type, expressed in a household measure (like “1 cup” or “3 cookies”) that comes closest to the reference amount.
Some examples of RACCs:
- Bread and rolls: 50 grams
- Bagels, muffins, and toaster pastries: 110 grams
- Cookies: 30 grams
- Cheese: 30 grams
- Carbonated beverages and water: 360 milliliters (about 12 ounces)
So if you’re making cookies that weigh 15 grams each, the RACC of 30 grams means your serving size is 2 cookies. If your cookies weigh 28 grams each, the serving size is still 1 cookie since that’s the closest household amount to 30 grams. The label must then state both the household measure and the metric weight: “Serving size 2 cookies (30g).”
FDA Rounding Rules
Raw nutritional data almost never goes on the label as-is. The FDA requires specific rounding increments for each nutrient, and getting these wrong is one of the most common mistakes on homemade labels.
Calories are rounded to the nearest 10 for values above 50 and to the nearest 5 for values between 5 and 50. Below 5 calories, you can list “0.” Total fat follows a similar pattern: values above 5 grams round to the nearest whole gram, values between 0.5 and 5 grams round to the nearest 0.5 gram, and anything below 0.5 grams can be listed as 0. Sodium rounds to the nearest 10 milligrams above 140mg, to the nearest 5mg between 5 and 140mg, and to zero below 5mg. Each nutrient has its own rounding table, and using nutrition label software automates this process for you.
Typography and Formatting Specs
The label’s visual format follows precise FDA rules. The “Nutrition Facts” header must be set in Franklin Gothic Heavy or Helvetica Black, extending the full width of the label box. It must be the largest type on the label, no smaller than the equivalent of 13 points in the standard vertical format (though it can go smaller on reduced-size labels as long as it remains the largest element).
The calorie count gets special visual emphasis. On a standard vertical label, the numerical calorie value must be bold and no smaller than 16 points. A thick 7-point rule (horizontal line) separates the “Nutrition Facts” header area from the serving size information, and a 3-point rule separates the calorie section from the nutrients below it. General label text uses 6-point or larger Helvetica Black and Helvetica Regular.
Indentation matters for showing nutrient relationships. Saturated fat and trans fat are indented under total fat. Dietary fiber, total sugars, and added sugars are indented under total carbohydrate. Added sugars gets a further indent under total sugars. These indentations tell the consumer which nutrients are subcomponents of others.
Alternative Formats for Small Packages
Not every product can fit the standard vertical label. The FDA allows alternative formats based on your package’s total available surface area. Packages with 40 square inches or less of labeling space can use a tabular format, which arranges the nutrient information in side-by-side columns instead of a single vertical stack. Packages with less than 12 square inches can go even more compact with a linear (string) format, where all the nutrition information runs in a continuous line of text. The linear format is only permitted when the package literally cannot fit a tabular display.
On tabular labels for small packages, the formatting specs relax slightly. The calorie value can be as small as 14 points bold instead of the standard 16, and the “Calories” text can drop to 10 points. Linear labels allow the smallest sizes of all, with general text going as low as 6 points.
The Ingredient List
Every packaged food also needs an ingredient list, which is separate from the Nutrition Facts panel. Ingredients must be listed by their common names in descending order of predominance by weight. The ingredient that weighs the most in your recipe goes first, and so on down to the lightest. Ingredients present at 2% or less by weight can be grouped at the end after a statement like “Contains 2% or less of” followed by those ingredients in any order.
If one of your ingredients is itself a multi-ingredient item (say, a chocolate coating made of sugar, cocoa butter, and milk), you have two options. You can list “chocolate coating” followed by its sub-ingredients in parentheses, ordered by weight within that component. Or you can skip naming the composite ingredient entirely and just fold all its individual components into the main ingredient list in their correct position by weight in the finished product.
Small Business Exemptions
If you’re a very small operation, you may not need a Nutrition Facts label at all. The FDA offers two exemptions. The first covers low-volume products: if your business averages fewer than 100 full-time equivalent employees and you sell fewer than 100,000 units of a given product in 12 months, that product qualifies. The second covers small retailers with total annual gross sales of $500,000 or less, or annual food and supplement sales to consumers of $50,000 or less.
These exemptions aren’t automatic. You need to file the appropriate notice with the FDA. And the exemption disappears immediately if a nutrition claim appears anywhere on your packaging. The moment you put “low fat” or “good source of fiber” on your label, full nutrition labeling becomes mandatory regardless of your business size.
Practical Steps to Build Your Label
The fastest path for most small food businesses is to use nutrition label software that handles the math, rounding, and formatting for you. Programs like Nutritionix, ReciPal, or the USDA’s FoodData Central database let you input your recipe, specify a serving size based on the appropriate RACC, and generate a print-ready label that meets current FDA formatting rules. These tools typically cost between $0 and $50 per month depending on features.
If your product is complex, heavily processed, or makes specific nutrient claims, invest in lab analysis. Send three to five samples from different production batches to an FDA-recognized food testing lab. The lab report gives you defensible numbers that can withstand an FDA audit. Many labs will also generate the formatted label for you as part of the testing package.
Before printing, compare your finished label against the FDA’s sample formats available on their website. Check that every mandatory nutrient is present in the right order, that your rounding is correct, that your serving size aligns with the RACC for your food category, and that the typography meets minimum size requirements. A label review by a food regulatory consultant, typically $200 to $500, can catch errors before they become costly reprints or compliance issues.