Nutrition Label for Sugar Kelp Products
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From a Farmer in Alaska: I am wondering if you or anyone you know can help us with some food labeling questions. We got back results from Eurofins lab for the nutritional content of the fresh raw sugar kelp. I am wondering, can we use these results to make a nutritional label for dried sugar kelp?
GreenWave: Nutrition labels aren't required by law unless you meet one of the following criteria:
- You're making a nutrient claim (e.g. low fat, gluten free)
- Your business has more than $50k in food sales AND more than $500k in total sales, or
- Your business has more than 10 full-time employees or sales of more than 100k units of product
That said, I totally get it and agree that having a nutrition label makes a product seem more legitimate and can be an important sales tool for people purchasing it for health reasons.
You can use your Eurofins nutrition analysis as a place to start, but depending on who you're selling to I might caveat the nutrition panel by letting them know that it's based on a single data point and their mileage might vary. There's a fair amount of evidence that the nutrient contents of kelp vary significantly over the course of the season, so in an ideal world you'd start building up a collection of data to get a sense of how your specific nutrients change based on calendar date, # of days since outplanting, and/or water temperature. Once you've got a grasp of the variation, you could think about creating 'blends' of early and late season kelp to achieve a more consistent end product from a nutritional perspective.
Also: check out ReciPal, a tool for making nutrition labels which comes in especially handy when you're making value-added products that involve multiple ingredients. You can either use their listing for kelp or add your own as a 'custom ingredient'.
@grace_collery - I also refer to my state guidelines for food labeling as well as the FDA recommendations (https://www.fda.gov/regulatory...)