Nutritional labelling for the Saudi market

Nutritional labelling for prepackaged food in the Gulf is governed by GSO 2750, current edition GSO 2750:2024. It works alongside GSO 9:2022, the Gulf Technical Regulation for labelling of prepackaged foodstuffs: GSO 9 governs the label, GSO 2750 governs the nutrition declaration on it.

Before you commission any analysis, confirm which edition your destination market is enforcing and whether the product carries a claim. A claim changes the work.

Some values in a nutrition panel are measured directly. Protein, fat, moisture, ash, sugars, sodium and fibre are determinations, each with an established method. Other values are calculated from those: energy is derived from the measured macronutrients, and carbohydrate is commonly obtained by difference.

A competent report states which values were measured and which were calculated. A report that presents everything as though it were measured is hiding the part a reviewer would want to see, and it is the part that fails first when the panel is questioned.

The usual failure is not dishonesty. It is a panel calculated from a recipe, or lifted from a comparable product, at a point when both were roughly right. Then an ingredient changes, or a supplier changes, or a process yields differently — and the panel is now wrong on every pack printed since, with nobody aware.

A measured panel is a snapshot of the product as sold. That is why the sample has to be the product as sold, in its own packaging, from normal production, and not a development batch made by hand.

The version anyone checking will buy is the version off the line, not the one from the development kitchen.

A nutrition or health claim — high in fibre, source of protein, reduced sugar — is a specific assertion about a specific nutrient, and it has to be supported by measuring that nutrient rather than by a general panel.

Fortified products are the other case where the work grows: a declared vitamin or mineral level has to be established by a determination for that nutrient, and fortification levels are not stable across shelf life, which is a shelf-life question as much as a labelling one.

Destination markets differ on panel format, units, rounding conventions and which nutrients are mandatory. The underlying determinations usually do not change; the presentation does.

It is cheaper to commission the full determination set once and present it several ways than to re-analyse per market. Say which markets you are targeting when you request the work.