Advice on Food Labelling

According to EU Commission all the following foods have to be clearly mentioned on the label of pre-packed foods, even when present in very small amounts.

• Celery
• Cereals containing gluten (i.e. wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, camut or their hybrids)
• Eggs
• Fish
• Lupin (a kind of legume of the Fabaceae family)
• Milk
• Molluscs
• Mustard
• Peanuts
• Sesame seeds
• Shellfish
• Soya
• Sulphur dioxide (used as antioxidant and preservative, e.g. in dried fruits, wine, processed potatoes)
• Tree nuts
• Also sulphite (in concentrations above 10mg/kg) need to be listed 

This information can help you identify whether or not a food contains an ingredient that you need to avoid. Sometimes small amounts of an allergen can get into a product by accident, even though food producers take great care to stop this happening.

If there is a possibility that this could happen in a factory, the food label might say something such as ‘may contain nuts’.

We’d like to know what problems you face when it comes to creating healthy dishes so we can offer relevant advice to real-life issues.