Nutrition Label Generator

Creating a clear nutrition label for homemade food products, recipe development, or meal prep tracking no longer requires expensive dietitian software. This tool calculates macronutrients, micronutrients, and calorie counts from ingredient data and formats the output as a standard nutrition facts panel.

How to Use the Nutrition Label Generator

1. Enter each ingredient with the quantity used in the recipe (e.g., 200g rolled oats, 50g honey, 30g almond butter).
2. The tool looks up nutritional data for each ingredient from its built-in database.
3. Enter the number of servings the recipe makes.
4. Click Generate to see the per-serving nutrition panel.
5. Download or print the label for packaging, meal planning, or sharing.

The Formula

Total calories per serving = sum of (calories per 100g of ingredient x grams used / 100) / number of servings.

This same formula applies to each macronutrient: protein, total fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, dietary fibre, and sugars. Each is summed across all ingredients and divided by the serving count.

Calorie contributions per gram: protein = 4 kcal/g, carbohydrates = 4 kcal/g, fat = 9 kcal/g, dietary fibre = 2 kcal/g (in the UK, fibre is generally excluded from the calorie count; in the US it is included in carbohydrate totals). Alcohol contributes 7 kcal/g. The total calorie count should cross-check with the sum of macronutrient contributions.

Real-World Example

You make a batch of 12 protein balls with these ingredients: 200g oats (389 kcal/100g), 100g peanut butter (588 kcal/100g), 80g honey (304 kcal/100g), 50g protein powder (400 kcal/100g).

Total calories:

• Oats: 200/100 x 389 = 778 kcal
• Peanut butter: 100/100 x 588 = 588 kcal
• Honey: 80/100 x 304 = 243 kcal
• Protein powder: 50/100 x 400 = 200 kcal

Total = 1,809 kcal for the batch. Per ball (12 servings): 1,809 / 12 = 150.75 kcal, approximately 151 kcal per serving.

Understanding Nutrition Reference Values

Nutrition labels reference daily values so consumers can contextualise each nutrient against a 2,000 kcal/day benchmark. In the UK, Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs) or Reference Intakes (RIs) are the standard. Key reference values for adults are: energy 2,000 kcal, fat 70g, saturated fat 20g, carbohydrates 260g, total sugars 90g, protein 50g, salt 6g. Percentages of these values are shown alongside each nutrient amount on commercial food labels. Traffic light colour coding (green, amber, red) for fat, saturated fat, sugars, and salt is common on UK packaging.

Frequently Asked Questions

How accurate is the nutrition data for custom recipes? Accuracy depends on the quality of the ingredient database and the precision of your ingredient measurements. Cooked foods can differ from raw values because cooking affects water content and therefore concentrates or dilutes nutrients per gram. For homemade products where precise nutritional accuracy is required (such as for commercial sale), a laboratory analysis or verified nutritional database should be used.

Do cooking methods change the nutritional content? Cooking does alter some nutrients. Water-soluble vitamins (B vitamins, vitamin C) are partially destroyed by heat and leach into cooking water. Fat content increases when food is fried in oil. Protein is denatured by heat but the calorie content does not change significantly. Carbohydrates in starchy foods become more digestible when cooked, slightly increasing their glycaemic impact. For most macronutrient calculations, the effect of cooking on calorie content is relatively small.

Can I use this tool for commercial food labelling? This tool is suitable for personal use, recipe development, and meal planning. For legally compliant commercial food labels in the UK, Australia, or the EU, you must use a certified nutritional database or laboratory analysis, and the label must comply with the relevant food labelling regulations. The format required by law differs slightly between countries.

What is the difference between total sugars and added sugars? Total sugars includes all simple sugars present in the food, whether naturally occurring (such as fructose in fruit or lactose in milk) or added during processing. Added sugars are only those added during manufacturing or preparation. The distinction matters nutritionally because added sugars carry more health risk than equivalent amounts of naturally occurring sugars in whole foods.

Working backwards from the batch

The protein ball recipe above totals 1,809 kcal across 430 g of ingredients. Two figures follow from those two numbers, and both appear on a real panel. Energy density is 1,809 divided by 4.30, which gives 420.7 kcal per 100 g. Per-serving mass is 430 divided by 12, which gives 35.83 g. Multiply the two and the result is 150.75 kcal per serving, the figure the earlier example prints.

The mass check matters because people read a panel two ways. Someone comparing products on a shelf works per 100 g, and someone eating one ball works per serving. A recipe that is dense in energy carries a large per-100 g figure and a modest per-serving figure, and both are true of the same food. Peanut butter and honey push this recipe's density up; oats pull it down.

Converting to kilojoules uses the factor 1 kcal = 4.184 kJ. The batch holds 1,809 x 4.184 = 7,569 kJ, and one ball carries 630.7 kJ. UK and EU panels print both units together, kilojoules first, against reference intakes of 8,400 kJ and 2,000 kcal.

Serving count changes the panel, not the recipe

Every figure in that table comes from the same 430 g of ingredients. Choosing a serving count is a labelling decision rather than a cooking one, and the calculator divides by whatever number you enter. A batch sold as 12 pieces at 150.75 kcal each and the same batch sold as 24 pieces at 75.38 kcal each are identical food with different printed panels.

The percentage column is the part a shopper actually reads. One ball at 12 servings supplies 7.54% of the 2,000 kcal reference intake and 7.51% of the 8,400 kJ figure, which is a small share of a day. The same ball at 6 servings supplies 15.08%, and the wording on the pack has to change with it, because a claim about the share of a daily reference intake is tied to the portion the pack defines.

Two points about that percentage. The reference intake describes an average adult with average energy needs, so it is a benchmark for comparison and not a target for any one person. And a percentage that rounds to zero is legal to print in some markets and not others, which is why small-portion products often print the per-100 g column instead.

Reaching 100% of the energy reference intake on this recipe would take 13.27 balls at 150.75 kcal each. Reaching it on the 24-serving version would take twice as many, which is the arithmetic behind the warning that a small portion size can make a dense food look lighter than it is.

Where the count and the calorie figure disagree

The formula list on this page gives fibre 2 kcal/g and records that the UK generally leaves fibre out of the calorie count while the US includes it in carbohydrate. Following that difference through the arithmetic shows how the same food produces two energy figures.

Take a recipe whose ingredients supply 20 g of fibre across the batch. At 2 kcal/g the US convention adds 40 kcal to the batch, which is 3.33 kcal per ball across 12 servings, or 9.30 kcal per 100 g. A UK panel prints 150.75 kcal for that ball and a US panel prints 154.08 kcal for the same ball. Nothing about the food changed. The rule about which energy-yielding components count changed.

The Atwater factors give the cross-check described on this page. Protein and carbohydrate contribute 4 kcal/g each, fat contributes 9 kcal/g, fibre contributes 2 kcal/g on the US convention, and alcohol contributes 7 kcal/g. Multiply each gram figure by its factor, add the results, and compare the sum with the database energy for the same ingredient list. A gap wider than rounding usually means one database entry was recorded per cooked weight or per drained weight while the recipe gives the raw weight.

Fibre is the component that moves most between markets, because the same gram figure is counted at 2 kcal/g in one system and excluded in the other. Sugar alcohols and polyols, which some ingredient databases report, carry their own factors and are a further source of a panel that does not reconcile.

Where the traffic light thresholds come from

The traffic light coding this page mentions runs on fixed thresholds per 100 g. The NHS food labelling guidance places a food in the red band above 17.5 g of fat per 100 g, above 5 g of saturated fat per 100 g, and above 22.5 g of total sugars per 100 g. The green band is 3 g of fat or less, 1.5 g of saturated fat or less, and 5 g of total sugars or less. Amber covers the range in between. Salt runs on its own thresholds, higher than 1.5 g per 100 g at the red end and 0.3 g or less at the green end.

The thresholds apply per 100 g of a solid food rather than per serving, and that choice produces the results people find surprising. A 35.83 g ball cannot be scored directly against a per-100 g threshold; the composition is scaled up to 100 g first, and a product that looks light in one ball can score amber or red once scaled. The scheme is voluntary in the UK and is meant for comparison between similar products on a shelf, not for judging whether a portion is a sensible size.

Two limits worth knowing. The colours say nothing about vitamins, minerals, protein or fibre, so a product with three green lights can still be a poor source of most nutrients. And the thresholds differ for drinks, where the cut-offs are lower.

Source: NHS, How to read food labels, for the fat, saturated fat and total sugars thresholds and the reference intake values used above.

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