Natasha's Law
Natasha's Law label examples
The rule is short; applying it is fiddly. These five products cover the situations that produce almost every wrong label — an allergen hiding in an ingredient’s name, a compound ingredient, the same allergen twice, and a list too long for the label.
Reviewed against official guidance.SourcesNot legal advice.
The anatomy of one
A PPDS label needs three things: the name of the food, a full ingredients list in descending order of weight, and the 14 allergens emphasised within that list, every time they appear.
Everything below was produced by the same engine that runs our free generator, from example recipes. Each one is marked as an example, and each teaches one specific thing.
These are examples, not templates to copy
The recipes are invented for illustration. Your suppliers, quantities and method are different, and your label has to describe your food.
Chocolate Brownie
Butter is dairy but does not say so — the allergen has to be added to the name. The chocolate is a compound ingredient, so its own ingredients are broken out in brackets.
Chocolate Brownie
Ingredients: Caster sugar, Butter (MILK), Free range EGGS, Dark chocolate (cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, emulsifier: SOYA lecithin), WHEAT flour, Cocoa powder, Sea salt.
Salted Caramel Brownie
The same allergen appears in two different ingredients. It must be emphasised every time it appears, not just the first.
Salted Caramel Brownie
Ingredients: Caster sugar, Butter (MILK), Free range EGGS, Dark chocolate (cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, emulsifier: SOYA lecithin), WHEAT flour, Salted caramel (sugar, cream (MILK), butter (MILK), sea salt), Cocoa powder.
Chicken & Pesto Sandwich
A sandwich is almost entirely compound ingredients. The bread, the pesto and the mayonnaise each need their own ingredients listing inside brackets.
Chicken & Pesto Sandwich
Ingredients: Bread (WHEAT flour, water, yeast, salt), Cooked chicken breast, Pesto (basil, sunflower oil, CASHEW nuts, hard cheese (MILK), garlic, salt), Mayonnaise (rapeseed oil, EGG yolk, vinegar, MUSTARD), Rocket.
Victoria Sponge
A simple recipe, but the jam still has to be broken out — including its gelling agent and acidity regulator.
Victoria Sponge
Ingredients: WHEAT flour, Caster sugar, Free range EGGS, Butter (MILK), Raspberry jam (sugar, raspberries, gelling agent: pectin, acidity regulator: citric acid), Baking powder.
Check yours against these
Take one of your existing labels and ask:
- Is every ingredient there, including the salt, the raising agent and the flavouring?
- Does anything with its own ingredients — chocolate, jam, mayonnaise, bought-in bread — show them in brackets?
- Is every allergen emphasised every time it appears, including inside those brackets?
- Does an ingredient whose name does not mention its allergen — butter, mayonnaise, pesto — carry it in brackets after the name?
- Does the list run heaviest first?
- Can you read it at arm’s length on the finished pack?
If the answer to any of those is no, the fix is usually in compound ingredients or in how the emphasis is applied.
Questions
Can I copy one of these labels?
Why is butter written as “Butter (MILK)”?
Official sources
Everything on this page traces back to these. Where they and we disagree, they are right — tell us and we'll fix it.
- Labelling guidance for prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food productsFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK
- Introduction to allergen labelling for PPDS foodFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK
- Food labelling: giving food information to consumersGOV.UK
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