It has been a while since I’ve thought about the format and fonts of the nutritional info labels used on food products. This week a couple of people asked me what the fonts and character size needed.
I didn’t have the answer in my head, but the FDA came up with the solution, which I’m happy to share here:
The FDA certainly likes the Helvetica typeface and uses it throughout the label design. As you can see, Helvetica is used throughout the label (although the heading “Nutrition Facts” can also be printed using Franklin Gothic Heavy) in various sizes and in both regular and black versions.
How to Design a Nutritional Label
Many label or print software packages come with templates for the nutritional information that you can populate with the specific data for your products. If you don’t have a template, it is pretty easy to create your own design.
How to Print a Nutritional Label
In many cases, the nutritional information will be pre-printed on your labels, but it can also be printed using a number of technologies, such as thermal or thermal transfer – I prefer to use 300 DPI printers, inkjet, or laser. TTO overprinters can also be integrated into your packaging equipment to print nutritional information directly to your flexible packaging.
Proposed Changes to Nutritional Labeling
The current Nutrition Facts label has been in use for twenty years, and the FDA is currently looking at some changes intended to help consumers make better decisions. You can read more about this here: Nutrition Labels Proposed Changes.
Changes include showing the amount of added sugars and changes to how portion sizes are shown. Here is the proposed label beside the current one:
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Labeling & Coding News is the online industry insider from ID Technology, EPI , Panther, Greydon, and Code Tech Labeling & Coding product brands of ProMach.
