Packaging food items is delicate because the product is meant to be ingested by consumers. Even if the food is not contaminated, it can trigger dangerous allergic reactions in users. Research has shown that there has been a rise in food allergies in children and a small set of adults.
In a bid to protect users from getting harmed by food that can trigger their allergies, the standard practice has always been to add an informative label to the product to guide users. However, today, other innovative ways are being used to ensure that all high-risk members of the population are safe.
Why is Clear Allergen Label Essential?
An allergen label is an addition to the regular custom design on the food package that warns users of potential reactions to some substances in the food. People with those allergies will read the label and know not to ingest the product. These are some reasons why using an effective allergen label is so important in today’s market.
Protects At-Risk Populations From Harm
Data shows that life-threatening allergic reactions are becoming more common in children, making them part of the at-risk populations. Older adults are also at risk of getting harmed by an allergic reaction. Proper informative food labels will help the user or their caregiver understand what is inside the product and whether or not it will trigger an allergic reaction.
Builds Consumer Trust
Clear allergen labeling shows consumers that your business cares about their well-being as opposed to being totally profit-oriented. Moreover, a product that has all the information about its ingredients and potential allergens feels a lot safer to use than one that barely gives any information about the potential harm that can come from using it.
Compliance
The law makes sure that every business has to look out for its customers to protect them from dangerous allergic reactions. Consumer safety packaging is a requirement that every product, especially those containing food and drugs, must pass before they can be permitted to be released for use in the market.
Breaking this law can result in having to pay a huge fine or possibly even a jail term if the product harms someone. In addition, if a poorly labeled product harms someone and they sue the business, the manufacturer can end up paying millions in damages.
Important Features for Effective Allergen Labeling Design
Allergen labeling is more than just pasting information about substances that could trigger allergic reactions on the back of a product. It must be clear enough for anyone to take notice of before ingesting the food item.
Color Contrast
To ensure you create clear allergen warnings, there has to be sufficient contrast between the background color of the package design and the text the allergen warnings are printed in. If there is enough contrast, the text will be easy to read without much difficulty.
Some packages use color codes to describe high-risk and low-risk allergens to draw users’ attention to the important details.
Text Size
The text also has to be legible so anyone can look at the package and interpret and understand the allergen labels on it. For consumer safety, you should use large fonts to make the warnings noticeable and keep certain details, like the names of the allergens, in bold.
Consistency
Keep the warning placement in a consistent location across all your products. Furthermore, use the symbols and format that users already use to design your allergy-friendly packaging. A good example is a nuts symbol to let people with peanut allergies know that the product has nuts in it easily.
Actionable Steps To Make Allergen Warnings on Labels Effective
With technological advancements, manufacturers now use QR codes and NFC chips to pass extra information about the product to consumers. You can use this to maximize the space on your package and still give users sufficient warnings about the allergens.
Furthermore, to guarantee consumer safety, it is also smart to use precautionary statements when a product may contain small bits of an allergen where they are not an active ingredient. Also, test the visibility of the food packaging design with people before shipping the product to the public.
Final Thoughts on Allergen Labeling
Allergen-friendly packaging is deliberately included on packages to save lives. Even businesses that do not have their consumers’ interests as a top priority have to have allergen labels because it is a legal requirement for food items. The key things to have in mind when designing the allergen label section of the package are legibility, consistency, and clarity.
