FDA Nutrition Facts Label: Format, Rounding, and Claims

The FDA’s Nutrition Facts label requirements are set out in federal regulation 21 CFR 101.9, which dictates exactly which nutrients appear on the panel, in what order, in what type size, and against which reference daily values.¹ The current version of the label reflects a major redesign the FDA finalized in 2016, with compliance deadlines that ran through January 2020 for large manufacturers and January 2021 for smaller ones.² Congress created the underlying authority in the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990.³

What Every Label Must Show

The panel opens with the serving size and the number of servings per container. Directly below that comes total calories per serving, printed larger and bolder than anything else on the panel.

Then the required nutrients appear in a fixed order: total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, dietary fiber, total sugars, added sugars, and protein.¹ Added sugars is one of the more useful lines to check. It separates sugar put into a food during processing from sugar that occurs naturally in ingredients like fruit or milk, so you can see how heavily sweetened a product actually is.

Four vitamins and minerals are also mandatory: vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium. Each appears in milligrams or micrograms and as a percentage of the Daily Value. The FDA selected these four because Americans tend to fall short on them. Other vitamins and minerals can be listed voluntarily, but they become mandatory if the product is fortified with them or if the label makes a health claim about them.

How Serving Sizes Are Set

The serving size at the top of the label is not something a manufacturer picks. It comes from a table of Reference Amounts Customarily Consumed, standard portion sizes derived from national food consumption surveys and codified at 21 CFR 101.12.⁴ A bag of chips uses a 30-gram reference amount. A bottle of juice uses 240 mL. The point is to reflect what people actually eat in one sitting rather than an aspirational portion, which is why serving sizes on many products got bigger in the 2016 update.

Single-Ingredient Sugars Get a Modified Format

Pure honey, maple syrup, and other single-ingredient sugars follow a slightly different rule. They do not have to show a gram amount for added sugars, because the entire product is sugar. They do have to display the percent Daily Value for added sugars, marked with a dagger symbol (†) that directs you to a footnote explaining how one serving contributes to daily sugar intake.⁵

How To Read Percent Daily Value

The right-hand column shows Percent Daily Value (%DV). It tells you how much of a day’s recommended intake one serving provides, based on a 2,000-calorie diet.⁶ The FDA’s quick rule: 5% DV or less is low for a nutrient, and 20% DV or more is high.⁷

That rule cuts both directions. Trying to limit sodium and seeing 40% DV on a frozen dinner means one meal takes nearly half your daily budget. Looking for fiber, aim for products at 20% DV or higher per serving.

The underlying reference Daily Values are worth knowing, since not everyone eats 2,000 calories:

Total fat: 78 g
Saturated fat: 20 g
Cholesterol: 300 mg
Sodium: 2,300 mg
Total carbohydrate: 275 g
Dietary fiber: 28 g
Added sugars: 50 g
Vitamin D: 20 mcg
Calcium: 1,300 mg
Iron: 18 mg
Potassium: 4,700 mg⁷

If your calorie needs differ from 2,000, the %DV still works as a rough benchmark for comparing two products against each other.

Rounding Rules and the “Zero” Trap

The numbers on the panel are rounded, not exact. Calories are rounded to the nearest 5-calorie increment up to 50 calories, and to the nearest 10-calorie increment above that. Anything under 5 calories can be declared as zero, which is how a cooking spray with roughly 4 calories per spray legally prints “0 calories.”¹

Total fat rounds to the nearest half-gram below 5 grams and to the nearest whole gram above that. Carbohydrates round to the nearest gram, and anything under half a gram can appear as zero. The practical consequence: a product listing “0g trans fat” can legally contain up to 0.49 grams per serving. Across several servings, that adds up.

Dual-Column Labels on Multi-Serving Packages

Some packages contain two or three servings but are realistically eaten in one sitting. A 20-ounce soda is the classic case, since the reference amount for carbonated beverages is 12 fluid ounces and few people cap the bottle partway through. For these products, the label has to show two columns: one per serving, one per entire package.⁸ The dual-column requirement kicks in when a package holds at least 200% but no more than 300% of the reference amount.

Individually sold products that are clearly meant to be eaten in one sitting but contain more than three servings must declare nutrition information for the entire package. Small or oddly shaped packages with little label space can qualify for abbreviated or linear-format labels.

Visual Format Requirements

The panel’s layout is regulated so manufacturers cannot bury unflattering figures. The calorie count must appear in a large, bold typeface, with the number itself no smaller than 22 points, making it the single most prominent figure on the label.⁹ Serving size and servings-per-container also appear enlarged and bold relative to the individual nutrient lines.⁶

A thick horizontal bar separates the calorie line from the nutrient breakdown, and a thinner bar divides the nutrient section from the footnote at the bottom. The footnote reads: “The % Daily Value tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.”⁹

Front-of-Package Claims With Legal Definitions

Words that appear on the front of the package are not just marketing. “High,” “good source,” and “healthy” each have precise legal thresholds.

A product labeled “high” in a nutrient, or “rich in” or “excellent source of,” must contain at least 20% of the Daily Value per serving. “Good source,” “contains,” or “provides” requires 10% to 19% of the Daily Value per serving.¹⁰

The “healthy” claim was rewritten in December 2024. To use it now, a product must contain a meaningful amount of food from at least one food group recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, or lean protein, for example) and stay within limits on added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium.¹¹ For most individual products, that means no more than 10% DV for sodium (230 mg) and no more than 5% to 10% DV for added sugars depending on the food group. Plain whole foods like vegetables and fruits with nothing added automatically qualify.

The FDA has separately proposed a front-of-package “Nutrition Info box” that would show “Low,” “Med,” or “High” ratings for saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.¹² As of mid-2025 it remains a proposal with no final rule or compliance date, so it is not yet in effect.

Allergen Disclosures Sit Outside the Panel

Allergen labeling is a separate federal requirement from the Nutrition Facts panel. Every packaged food must identify whether it contains any of the nine major allergens: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame.¹³ Sesame became the ninth allergen under the FASTER Act, effective January 1, 2023.

Disclosure can happen in one of two ways: in parentheses after the ingredient name, such as “lecithin (soy),” or in a separate “Contains” statement immediately following the ingredient list, such as “Contains wheat, milk, and soy.” When tree nuts, fish, or shellfish are present, the specific type must be named (almonds, cod, shrimp).

Advisory statements like “may contain traces of peanuts” or “produced in a facility that processes tree nuts” are voluntary. The FDA allows them only when a manufacturer has already taken every reasonable step to prevent cross-contact and the risk of trace contamination remains unavoidable. They cannot substitute for proper manufacturing practices. Allergen labeling requirements do not apply to raw agricultural products, highly refined oils, alcoholic beverages, or most foods prepared and sold without prepackaged labels at restaurants.

What Is Not Required To Carry a Label

Not every food product needs a Nutrition Facts panel.

Stores with total annual gross sales of $500,000 or less, or food and supplement sales of $50,000 or less, are exempt and do not need to file anything with the FDA.¹⁴
A manufacturer with fewer than 100 full-time equivalent employees that sells fewer than 100,000 units of a particular product per year can claim an exemption for that product but must file an annual notice with the FDA. Products bearing nutrient content claims do not qualify.
Fresh produce and raw seafood are exempt from mandatory labeling, though many retailers voluntarily post nutrition information at the point of sale.
Nutritionally insignificant foods like plain coffee, tea leaves, and most single spices do not have to carry a label.
Food made and sold on-site at restaurants, cafeterias, and small retail bakeries is generally exempt unless it makes a specific health or nutrient content claim.¹

Chain restaurants with 20 or more locations operating under the same name are a large exception to that last item. They must post calorie counts on menus and menu boards for standard menu items.¹⁵ This is a separate requirement from the Nutrition Facts panel and covers restaurants, bakeries, coffee chains, grocery store delis, and similar retail food establishments.

Dietary supplements do not use a Nutrition Facts panel at all. They carry a Supplement Facts panel, which follows different rules: it can name the plant part an ingredient comes from and can list ingredients without established Daily Values, and it never shows “zero” for a nutrient the way the Nutrition Facts panel does.¹⁶

How Accurate the Numbers Have To Be

The FDA can pull products off shelves and test them. The agency compares the lab-analyzed values against the label and applies specific tolerances. For nutrients you should limit (calories, sodium, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sugars), the actual content cannot exceed the declared label value by more than 20%. For nutrients you are encouraged to get more of (vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber), the actual content must be at least 80% of the declared value.¹ A product outside those tolerances is legally misbranded.

Fiber has an extra wrinkle. The FDA’s definition of dietary fiber covers fiber naturally present in intact plants plus a specific list of isolated or synthetic fibers shown to provide a measurable health benefit, including beta-glucan, psyllium husk, cellulose, guar gum, pectin, locust bean gum, and hydroxypropylmethylcellulose.¹⁷ The agency has said it intends to add others, including inulin, polydextrose, and several resistant starches, and is using enforcement discretion to let manufacturers count them in the meantime. Any added fiber ingredient not on either list cannot be included in the dietary fiber declaration on the label.

1
eCFR. 21 CFR 101.9 – Nutrition Labeling of Food
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Industry Resources on the Changes to the Nutrition Facts Label
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 21 USC 343 – Misbranded Food
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eCFR. 21 CFR 101.12 – Reference Amounts Customarily Consumed Per Eating Occasion
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Food and Drug Administration. The Declaration of Added Sugars on Honey, Maple Syrup, Other Single-Ingredient Sugars and Syrups, and Certain Cranberry Products – Guidance for Industry
6
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Changes to the Nutrition Facts Label
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels
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eCFR. 21 CFR 101.9 – Nutrition Labeling of Food
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Food and Drug Administration. The New Nutrition Facts Label – Examples of Different Label Formats
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eCFR. 21 CFR 101.54 – Nutrient Content Claims for Good Source, High, More, and High Potency
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Use of the Healthy Claim on Food Labeling
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Front-of-Package Nutrition Labeling
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Food Allergies
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Small Business Nutrition Labeling Exemption
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Menu Labeling Requirements
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide – Chapter IV Nutrition Labeling
17
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Questions and Answers on Dietary Fiber