Several types of information you might expect to find on a food label are actually not required by federal law. Expiration dates, specific spice names, certain nutrients in trace amounts, and nutrition facts on products like raw produce and alcohol are all either voluntary or exempt. Understanding what’s left off, and why, can change how you read every label in your kitchen.
Expiration Dates Are Almost Never Required
This surprises most people: federal regulations do not require “best by,” “use by,” or “sell by” dates on any food product except infant formula. Every date stamp you see on yogurt, canned soup, cereal, or deli meat is placed there voluntarily by the manufacturer. Those dates reflect the company’s estimate of peak quality, not safety. A product past its “best by” date is not necessarily unsafe to eat.
Infant formula is the sole exception. The “use by” date on formula is federally mandated because nutrient levels can degrade over time, and infants depend on formula as a sole nutrition source. For everything else, dating is optional.
Nutrients Below Certain Thresholds
The Nutrition Facts panel does not need to list every nutrient if the amount per serving falls below specific cutoffs. These thresholds allow manufacturers to either omit the line entirely or list it as zero:
- Saturated fat: not required if total fat is under 0.5 grams per serving and no fat-related claims appear on the package.
- Cholesterol: not required if a serving contains less than 2 milligrams and the label makes no claims about fat or cholesterol.
- Dietary fiber: not required below 1 gram per serving.
- Total sugars and added sugars: not required below 1 gram per serving, as long as the label doesn’t make claims about sweeteners or sugar content.
- Vitamins and minerals: not required if present at less than 2 percent of the recommended daily intake.
This means a product can contain small but real amounts of fat, sugar, or cholesterol and still legally show “0g” on the label. If you eat multiple servings, those trace amounts add up. Cooking sprays are a classic example: a fraction-of-a-second spray is listed as zero calories and zero fat, but the can is still pure oil.
Specific Names of Spices and Flavorings
When you see “spices” or “natural flavor” on an ingredient list, you’re looking at a legal shortcut. Manufacturers are not required to name individual spices, natural flavors, or artificial flavors. They can use the blanket terms “spice,” “natural flavor,” or “artificial flavor” instead of listing each one separately. A barbecue sauce could contain six different spices and simply say “spices.”
There are a few exceptions. Spices that double as colorants, like paprika, turmeric, and saffron, must be declared as “spice and coloring” or by their specific name. Chemical preservatives always require individual naming. And if a product contains a blend of three or more characterizing flavors with no single dominant one, the label can use a generic description like “artificially flavored fruit punch” rather than naming each flavor.
Nutrition Facts on Raw Produce, Fish, and Alcohol
Not every food product carries a Nutrition Facts panel. Raw fruits, raw vegetables, and raw fish are covered by a voluntary labeling program rather than a mandatory one. The FDA publishes standard nutrition data for the 20 most frequently consumed items in each category, and grocery stores can choose to display that information on signs, posters, or shelf tags. But it’s not required on the food itself. This is why a bag of apples or a piece of salmon at the fish counter typically has no nutrition label.
Alcoholic beverages fall into a separate regulatory world entirely. Beer, wine, and spirits are overseen by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, not the FDA, and that agency does not require nutrition content labeling. Calorie and carbohydrate information on alcoholic drinks is voluntary. Some brands have started adding it in recent years, but they’re not obligated to.
Incidental Additives and Processing Aids
Ingredients that end up in the final product at insignificant levels, without serving any function in the finished food, do not need to appear on the label. These fall into a few categories. A substance might have been functional in one ingredient but carries over into the final product in a tiny, non-functional amount. Processing aids that are added during manufacturing but removed before packaging are also exempt, as are substances that get converted into components already naturally present in the food.
There is one important exception: sulfiting agents. Sulfites used as preservatives in ingredients are only considered “insignificant” if the finished food contains less than 10 parts per million. Above that threshold, they must be declared, because sulfite sensitivity can trigger serious reactions in some people.
Labels for Small Businesses and Bulk Foods
Small food businesses can qualify for exemptions from the standard Nutrition Facts requirement under two different rules. Companies with fewer than 100 full-time employees that sell fewer than 100,000 units of a product per year in the U.S. can skip the nutrition panel. Retailers with total annual sales of $500,000 or less, or food sales of $50,000 or less, also qualify. These businesses still need to provide basic information like ingredient lists and allergen declarations, but the full Nutrition Facts panel is not required.
Bulk foods sold at retail, like nuts, grains, or candy from bins, follow different rules too. As long as the store displays the labeling from the bulk container where customers can see it, or puts up a sign with the required ingredient information, the individual scoops you bag up don’t need their own labels. Gift baskets and assorted food packages also get some flexibility: if the items packed together vary from package to package, ingredients that aren’t common to every package don’t need to be listed.
What IS Required on Most Packaged Foods
To put the exemptions in context, here is what the FDA does mandate for most packaged food products: a product name, net weight, the manufacturer’s name and address, a complete ingredient list in descending order by weight, a Nutrition Facts panel with calories, total fat, sodium, total carbohydrates, protein, and certain vitamins and minerals, plus clear declaration of the eight major food allergens (milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans) along with sesame, which was added as a ninth major allergen in 2023.
Everything discussed above represents the gaps in that framework: the dates, nutrients, ingredient specifics, product categories, and business sizes where federal law does not demand full labeling. Knowing those gaps helps you read labels more critically and understand why two similar products at the store can look so different on the back of the package.