Does Your Product Label Need a Nutrition Facts Table?

Does your product need a nutrition facts table on its label? In most cases, yes. Since the Ministry of Health’s Resolución 810 de 2021 (Resolution 810 of 2021), nutritional information must be reported on every packaged or wrapped food, apart from the cases that the rule itself exempts. In practice, that covers a good share of the products you find in the supermarket.

What the nutrition facts table is and what it is for

The nutrition facts table is a simple tool that shows the calories and nutrients a food provides. It meets two clear goals: giving the consumer useful, precise information to decide what to buy, and giving the manufacturer an incentive to improve the nutritional profile of its products. It is a piece of information that serves both sides of the counter.

When a food must carry a nutrition facts table

The general rule is direct: if the food is packaged or wrapped, it must report its nutritional information, apart from the exceptions the rule sets. Beyond that baseline, there are claims that make the table mandatory. If the label includes any of these, the nutritional information must appear:

• It declares nutritional information: calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates, proteins, or sugars, among others.
• It uses claims about a nutrient or comparative ones: ‘source of’, ‘low in’, ‘free of’, and the like.
• It asserts health properties, such as the function of a nutrient or the reduction of the risk of a disease.
• It describes the food in a way that produces the same effect as a nutritional or health claim.

What the format depends on

The table’s format is not one size fits all. It changes with the number of nutrients the food has and whether they are mandatory to declare, such as fat and sodium, or optional, such as some vitamins and minerals. The population group the product is aimed at also matters, along with how representative each nutrient’s contribution is. That is why two similar products can show different tables.

The label is part of the sanitary registration

The nutrition facts table is one piece of the labeling, and the labeling is reviewed when the product goes through its sanitary registration before INVIMA. A label that does not meet the rules in force is one of the frequent causes of rejection or delay. If you are going to design the label, review it together with the other packaging requirements.

If it is not clear to you what nutritional information your product must carry, at SPI Américas we help you define it before printing, and check that the whole label lines up with the rule and with your sanitary registration.