Population growth, changing diets, and increased desire for pre-packaged foods and beverage products present significant opportunities for the healthcare, food, and agribusiness sectors across the world. 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 in the ruling that any food sold or offered for sale should be fit for human consumption. It is also necessary that the food as offered or sold must also be of the nature, substance and quality demanded by the consumers. All food facts on labels should be true and non-misleading as to nature, substance or quality.
Basic labeling 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 Center for Food Safety has guidelines for foods in Hong Kong, which want food manufacturers, food services providers, and nutrition or diet consultants to provide reference and make truthful and informative labels in a consumer-friendly or client-friendly manner.
As per the labeling scheme guidelines for nutrition information, the nutrition labeling format has to present the nutrition information in a tabular format and place the nutrition label on 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 make healthy dietary choices. However, coming up with nutrition facts labels manually, analyzing the ingredients, and turning the product recipes into nutrition facts panels, calorie counts, vitamin content, etc. is laborious and time-taking, and potentially may be prone to mistakes.
An alternative is to create nutrition facts quicker and effortlessly by entering a list of ingredients and measurements or by inputting data about ingredients and measurements into an online nutrient analysis application. The application can make use of the nutritional database, calculate the nutritional content of a food item and generate food labels on the fly. One can customize the label format to the specifications of the clients’ or 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 both review the FAQ section nutrition facts food labels.
What is the Smart Choice of a Nutrition Facts Labeling 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 labeling guidelines and is available in many label formats in English and/or traditional Chinese. Users are able to build unlimited recipes/formulas using it’s ingredient database.
To learn more about Nutritionist Pro™, please visit www.nutritionistpro.com
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