The importance of food labels is much more than only legal requirements. These labels help consumers to make informed purchases. The details about the ingredients are vital for consumers to check if the product is safe for the allergy they might have. In addition to this, labels also help them know the process and details of storing the product. To fill in the required details and make the label informative and appealing, you can use label design software. It offers you numerous editing features like fonts, colors, templates, and clipart to make your labels in the desired way.
Before this, you need to know the importance of food labels to make sure your product labels contain all the important information. Let’s have a look at its importance:
First, Let’s Talk about Legal
If you are a food producer, you need to label all your products that are appropriate to the legal guidelines. In case you fail to adhere to the legal requirements, the chances are that the authorities may take action on your business, like sending you an improvement notice. It will have all the details of what you are doing wrong and how you can comply with them, and by when.
You can continue food production after receiving an improvement notice, but you need to take all the necessary steps to improve your business, as stated by the legal authorities. If you ignore an improvement notice and are non-compliant after the specified date, you may face prosecution.
Here’s a list of things your food label must have:
- The name of the food. This should not be a false or misleading name. It should represent the food packed inside.
- A list of ingredients under the heading ‘Ingredients.’ The ingredients should be listed in the descending order of weight.
- The percentage of ingredients. You need to ensure that the percentage of each ingredient is mentioned on the label.
- Instructions to cook and store the food. Mention all the necessary instructions with precise temperature and other details.
- Use by’ or ‘best before dates. This is important to mention so that consumers can consume the food while it’s fresh and stay away from the side effects of eating it after the ‘use dates’
- Company’s contact details. Include the country, name, address, and contact number of your business.
- Country of origin or provenance. You should not imply your product originates from its manufactured place. It has to be the place you got the ingredients from.
To manually add all the details every time while printing the labels can be a time-consuming and tedious task. Instead, you can invest in a product designer tool, use the readymade template, or make one, save it, and use it multiple times. You will just need to add the details and print them.
Gain Customers Trust
Labels help customers to understand the composition of each ingredient of your food. This information is fundamental to ensure that customers know what they are eating. They can keep track of intakes of micronutrients to avoid any side effects. They will also get details about the weight of each ingredient, through which they can monitor if it is good for their health or not. And when you have mentioned the food name on the label, it helps people to ensure that they are buying the required product and are not being misled.
Keeps Customer Safe
When customers know the ingredients, they can also be sure that the food doesn’t contain any ingredients that they are allergic to and prevent reactions. Plus, by mentioning ‘use before’ dates, they will be safe from eating contaminated food with bacteria, viruses, and other toxins. This way, they can save themselves from any hazardous situation, and you will never be put in a situation where you have to legally be answerable to authorities.
Conditions like diabetes, and high or low blood pressure also points to be considered in this frame. If there is sugar in the food, the label will let your customers know if the product is safe for them to consume or not. You also need to mention the maximum daily intake quantity on the label because there are certain ingredients that should not be taken more than a certain quantity. It can affect health in adverse ways.
Thus, you can save your customers from consuming too much of certain products to ensure they are not having a hard time after purchasing your food product.
Helps People to Stop Food Wastage
Date marking on products helps customers to stay updated about the last date to use it. This way, they can prevent food wastage and consume it until it’s safe to do so. Thus, marking dates precisely and correctly is necessary. With food labels, you can also provide a number of serves the packet can provide. It will help customers to buy only the necessary number of packets.
Support for Local Producers
Food labels indicate the food’s origin, like Kona Coffee (USA), Darjeeling Tea (India), etc. This will attract the buyer’s attention and inspire them to buy the products of their local producers. They will buy it knowing it is of their locality because of the taste and texture that is only provided by their local producers.
Geographical locations mean a lot to customers when buying food products to satisfy their taste desires. To give different themes to your food labels as per their origin, you can use a product designer tool to edit the colors, background, and fonts of the labels.
Final Words
You should not ignore the importance of food labels due to the above reasons. The quality of food and details of food labels need your maximum attention. Moreover, you can also mention the health claims that your food product can provide. For example: ‘no sugar contained’, ‘instant energy booster’, ‘helps in hair growth, ‘balances cholesterol level’, etc. This will boost your revenue because everyone likes health benefits with tasty food.
To sum it up, here are the basic food labels you must have on your packaging:
- Nutrition Information Panel
- HSR (Health Star Rating) system
- List of all the Ingredients
- Nutrition content claims
- Health claims
- Percentage Daily Intake
Ensure you follow local and international legal guidelines for all your food products to avoid any notices from authorities. Your ultimate goal should be to keep your customers aware of what they are eating, how they should eat it, how they should store it, and when they can store it.
You can use label design software to seamlessly design your food labels by yourself. Add all the elements and information you want, use templates, clipart, different fonts, etc. This is the real catch to making your food labels interesting and informative.
Source: https://www.klusster.com/portfolios/brush-your-ideas/contents/306450