Certain allergens must specify which type of allergen is contained in the food. Learn how to add these to your nutrition labels!
The FDA mandates that if a food contains either tree nuts, shellfish, or fish, the nutrition label must include the species of the ingredient that is the source of the dietary flag. For instance, if a dish contains almonds the nutrition label cannot simply say tree nuts. Rather, it must explicitly call out almonds. There are two ways of handling this in Galley:
- Create separate dietary flags for each type/species (recommended)
- Use generic names and have Galley pull in the ingredient external names
Separate Dietary Flags
The recommended way to account for the food source of these allergens is to have separate dietary flags for each species. For instance, you would have dietary flags named almonds, shrimp, salmon, etc. Then, the allergen list will contain the explicit names of the sources.
Generic Names
If a dietary flag is named shellfish, tree nuts, or fish, Galley will add the external name of the ingredient in parentheses next to the allergen name on the allergen list. This method is good if you would like to have both the generic allergen name and the species name listed on the nutrition label.
However, the downside of the method and why the alternative is recommended is that an ingredient's external name may not always be what you want to display on the allergen list. For example, if a recipe contains almond butter, you will want the external name of the ingredient to be almond butter on the ingredient list but list almonds on the allergen list.