Nutrition, health and related claims

Skip to main content

Search

Search（https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/search）

Nutrition, health and related claims

Standard 1.2.7 - Nutrition, health and related claims in the Food Standards Code（https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/food-standards-code） (the Code) set out requirements for making nutrition content and health claims about food.

Find out more about the Standard and the different types of claims.（https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/labelling/nutrition）

The Implementation Subcommittee for Food Regulation (ISFR) has guidance on how to comply with Standard 1.2.7. For more information read Getting Your Claims Right（https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/publications/gettingyourclaimsright） - a guide to complying with the Nutrition, Health and Related Claims Standard.

Health claims

You can only base health claims on food-health relationships that have been substantiated according to Standard 1.2.7. All health claims must be supported by scientific evidence to the same degree of certainty, whether they are pre-approved by us or self-substantiated by food businesses.

General level health claims

Food businesses wanting to make a general level health claim can base a claim on one of the more than 200 pre-approved food-health relationships in the Standard or self-substantiate a food-health relationship by following the process for systematic review in Schedule 6 of the Code.

Self-substantiating a food-health relationship

Food businesses self-substantiating a food-health relationship must notify us of the relationship before making a claim on food labels or in advertisements. We maintain a list of the notified food-health relationships. This is a public record of food businesses that have chosen to self-substantiate a food-health relationship to underpin a general level health claim.

We don't consider the merits of notified food-health relationships but manage the notification process. When we publish a notified relationship, it doesn't indicate acceptance or validation of the stated relationship.

Food businesses are not able to use a relationship in the list that has been notified by another food business. Food businesses wishing to make a claim based on a relationship that's already on the list must:

meet the systematic review requirements in Schedule 6

notify us of the relationship.

Further reading:

notifying a self-substantiated food-health relationship（https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/business/labelling/nutrition-health-and-related-claims/notifying-fhr）