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For a while I’ve been seeing a lot of talk about ‘allergens in bold’ — from influencers, bloggers, consumers and I’ve no doubt said it too. But that’s not the full picture and the allergy community needs to start painting it properly before a costly error occurs. #foodallergy 1/8
It’s “allergens in emphasis”. Allergens have to be presented in some way that distinguishes them from non-allergens in the list of the ingredients. Here is the text of the regulation, which as you'll see leaves emphasis options wide open. 2/8 #allergyawareness
Alternative example 1: allergens in yellow. #14allergens 3/8
Example 2: allergen in CAPS. #allergylabelling 4/8
Example 3: allergens in italics (albeit with barley wrongly omitted). (If you're looking for 'allergens in bold' this one could easily fool you, in my view.) (Pic thanks to @tatooinechick) #foodlabelling 5/8
Example 4: allergens underlined. #allergylaw 6/8
Example 5: combination emphasis, this one is indeed bold, but with underline too. (Pic thanks to @Myallergyboy) 7/8 #allergens
Reading regulations can be tedious but if you're doing great work advocating for food allergies, as so many are, in my view you need to have a decent grounding in labelling law too. Try FSA's Technical Guidance if you need to brush up. It's not so bad! https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/media/document/fsa-food-allergen-labelling-and-information-requirements-technical-guidance_0.pdf 8/8
