Australia nutrition information panel requirements (FSANZ Standard 1.2.8)
What a packaged food sold in Australia or New Zealand must carry under the Food Standards Code: the Nutrition Information Panel per serving and per 100 g, the seven mandatory nutrients, the Health Star Rating, plain-English allergen labelling, and the exemptions. Generated from your recipe, to the Code.
The Code, and who enforces it
Australia and New Zealand share the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, written by FSANZ and enforced by state, territory and New Zealand agencies. Nutrition labelling is Standard 1.2.8 (Nutrition information requirements); claims are Standard 1.2.7; allergens and advisory statements are Standard 1.2.3; the general labelling requirements, including the mandatory panel, are in Standard 1.2.1 and its schedules. The format on this platform is Australia / NZ FSANZ + Health Star; three Pacific markets (Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands) follow the same layout.
This page is written from the Code as in force on 2 September 2026. Australia's panel is deliberately unlike the US label: it is called a Nutrition Information Panel, it declares energy in kilojoules first, and its columns are per serving and per 100 g, with no percent-Daily-Intake column required.
The Nutrition Information Panel
The panel is headed NUTRITION INFORMATION and states servings per package and serving size (in g or mL, with a household measure optional). Below that, two columns, per serving and per 100 g (or per 100 mL), declare in this order: Energy in kJ (kcal may be added in brackets), Protein, Fat, total with saturated beneath, Carbohydrate with sugars beneath, and Sodium in mg. That is the mandatory seven; nothing else is required unless you claim it or add it.
Trans fat, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat, cholesterol, dietary fibre, and any vitamin or mineral are declared only when a nutrition content claim is made about them, when a claim is made about a related nutrient (a cholesterol claim drags trans fat onto the panel), or when they are added. Per-100 g values are what consumers are told to use for comparison, and they are also what the Health Star Rating and the claim criteria in Schedule 4 are computed from.
Rounding is to Schedule 12: energy to the nearest kJ, nutrients to no more than one decimal place for values under 10 g and whole numbers above, sodium to the nearest mg, with "less than 1 g" and "not detected" allowed at the low end. A serving is what the manufacturer determines a reasonable single occasion of consumption to be; the Code does not fix reference amounts the way the US RACC does, but the per-100 column means serving size cannot hide density.
Health Star Rating
The Health Star Rating is a voluntary front-of-pack system agreed by Australian and New Zealand governments, scoring a product from ½ to 5 stars in half-star steps. It is computed from the per-100 g values: energy, saturated fat, total sugars and sodium score "baseline" points against the product; fruit, vegetable, nut and legume content, protein and fibre score modifying points in its favour; and the net score maps to stars through category-specific bands. The Implementation Guide v9 (December 2025) is the current reference; earlier versions and the 2020 recalibration changed the sugar and sodium scoring and the treatment of fruit juice and dairy, so a rating computed to an old guide can be wrong by a full star.
The free Health Star Rating calculator uses the current algorithm, including the fruit-vegetable-nut-legume component that many online calculators omit. If you display stars, you must display them for every product in the range in the same graphic style, and you cannot show only the energy icon on some products and full stars on others within a range.
Allergens: Plain English Allergen Labelling
Since 25 February 2024 every packaged food must use Plain English Allergen Labelling under Standard 1.2.3. Each allergen is declared in the ingredient list in bold, using the prescribed name (wheat, gluten, milk, egg, fish, crustacean, mollusc, peanut, soy, sesame, lupin, and each tree nut by name: almond, Brazil nut, cashew, hazelnut, macadamia, pecan, pine nut, pistachio, walnut), and a separate "Contains" summary statement in bold lists the same allergens, in the same words, near the ingredient list. Sulphites at 10 mg/kg or more are declared too.
Three things distinguish the Australian list from others: lupin and mollusc are mandatory allergens; gluten is declared as a separate word alongside the cereal; and "may contain" precautionary statements are voluntary and, if used, should follow the VITAL program's thresholds rather than be applied to every product. The allergen matrix and allergen detector tools use the Australian list when the market is set to AU or NZ.
The rest of the label
Ingredient list (Standard 1.2.4): descending order by ingoing weight, compound ingredients broken out above 5%, additives by class name and specific name or number, and characterising ingredients declared as a percentage (Standard 1.2.10). Name of the food, lot identification, name and Australian or New Zealand address of the supplier, date marking ("best before" or "use by" in the prescribed form, Standard 1.2.5), directions for use and storage where safety depends on them, and net weight under trade measurement law complete the mandatory set.
Country of origin labelling is Australian consumer law, not the Food Standards Code: the Country of Origin Food Labelling Information Standard 2016 requires the kangaroo logo and bar chart for food grown, produced or made in Australia, and a text statement for imported food. New Zealand has its own Country of Origin of Food Act for single-ingredient foods. The Code's own labelling requirements are otherwise identical in both countries.
Exemptions from the NIP
Standard 1.2.8 exempts: food in a package with a total surface area of less than 100 cm²; food sold unpackaged, or packaged in the presence of the purchaser, or made and packaged on the premises where it is sold; food delivered packaged at the customer's request; herbs, spices, tea, coffee, vinegar, water and other foods of no nutritional significance; alcoholic beverages over 1.15% ABV (which have their own rules); and single-ingredient fruit, vegetables, meat and fish. The exemption is lost the moment a nutrition content claim or health claim is made, at which point a full panel is required, and it does not extend to the allergen or ingredient requirements.
Home-based and market producers should also check state food-business registration; the Code's labelling rules apply to any food for sale regardless of the size of the business.
Claims, and what they drag onto the panel
Standard 1.2.7 governs nutrition content claims ("source of fibre", "low fat", "no added sugar") and health claims. Every content claim has a condition in Schedule 4, and making it adds the nutrient to the NIP. A high-level health claim (about a serious disease) must be pre-approved by FSANZ; a general-level claim must be substantiated and, in either case, the product must pass the Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion, which is the same scoring engine as the Health Star Rating. The claim validator checks the Schedule 4 conditions for the AU/NZ market.
Selling in Australia and elsewhere
The NIP is accepted in Australia and New Zealand only. The same product for the UK or the EU needs the per-100 declaration in the 1169/2011 order with salt rather than sodium; for the United States, the Nutrition Facts panel with US Daily Values; for Singapore, the Nutri-Grade mark on drinks; for Japan, the CAA nutrition table. One recipe, re-rendered per market, is the point of this platform.
Australia labelling FAQ
Is the Nutrition Information Panel mandatory? For most packaged food, yes, under Standard 1.2.8, with exemptions for small packages under 100 cm², unpackaged food and foods of no nutritional significance.
Is the Health Star Rating mandatory? No, it is voluntary, but if you use it you must apply it consistently across a product range and compute it to the current guide.
Do I need kcal on the panel? Energy must be in kJ; kcal may be added in brackets.
Is the panel the same in New Zealand? Yes, the Food Standards Code is joint; only country-of-origin labelling differs.
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Nutrition Information Panel, Health Star Rating and allergen statements from one recipe. Free to start.
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