How to read UK food labels for allergens
Most people managing a food allergy learn label-reading the hard way, in a supermarket aisle, with a trolley behind them. It is a smaller skill than it looks. UK labelling law does a lot of the work for you — but only on some foods, and only in some ways, and the gaps are exactly where people get caught out.
Start with the ingredients list, not the front of the pack
On prepacked food sold in the UK, any of the 14 named allergens must be emphasised inside the ingredients list — usually bold, sometimes capitals or underlining. That is why "WHEAT flour" shouts at you from a packet of biscuits. The emphasis is a legal requirement, not a design choice, and it means the ingredients list is the most reliable thing on the packet.
The front of the pack is marketing. "Natural", "wholesome", "made with real fruit" and even "suitable for" claims are not allergen information. Turn the packet over.
Where you bought it changes what you are entitled to
This catches almost everyone, because the same sandwich can carry three different levels of information depending on how it was sold.
- Prepacked food — packaged before you chose it. Full ingredients list, 14 allergens emphasised.
- Prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) — packed on the premises it is sold from, like the sandwiches made in the back that morning. Since Natasha's Law came into force in October 2021, these need the food's name and a full ingredients list with allergens emphasised, exactly like prepacked food.
- Loose and non-prepacked food — the bakery counter, the deli, a restaurant meal. Allergen information must be available to you, but it does not have to be written down. It can be given verbally or by signposting, which means you have to ask, every time, and you are relying on the person who answers.
What "may contain" actually means
"May contain", "not suitable for", "made in a factory that also handles" — these are precautionary allergen labels, and they are voluntary. No UK law sets a threshold for when one must appear. That cuts both ways: its absence does not prove a food is safe, and its presence does not tell you how much allergen might be there or how likely it is.
Food Standards Agency guidance is that a precautionary label should only be used where a risk assessment has identified a real cross-contamination risk that is not adequately controlled, and that it should name the specific allergen — "may contain peanuts" rather than a catch-all "may contain nuts". Not every manufacturer follows that guidance closely, which is why two similar products can carry very different warnings. If a product matters to you and the label is vague, the manufacturer's customer care line is often the fastest route to a real answer.
"Vegan" is not the same as "free from milk and egg"
This is the single most common mix-up, and it is an easy one to make, because a vegan recipe by definition contains no dairy and no egg. But a vegan claim describes the recipe. It is not a food-safety claim, and it says nothing about what else runs down the same production line.
The FSA has been explicit about this: vegan labelling and free-from labelling communicate different things, and a vegan product should carry a precautionary allergen warning where a cross-contamination risk has been identified. A vegan chocolate bar that says "may contain milk" is not a contradiction or a mistake. For a milk or egg allergy, read the allergen information, not the vegan logo.
"Gluten-free" is a legal claim. "No gluten-containing ingredients" is not
"Gluten-free" has a defined meaning in UK law: no more than 20 parts per million of gluten, with controls in place to keep it there. It is the claim that carries weight for coeliac disease.
"No gluten-containing ingredients" sounds like the same thing and is not. It describes the recipe only and makes no promise about contamination during milling, baking or packing. Oats are the clearest example: oats do not contain gluten themselves, but standard oats are routinely contaminated in transport and milling, which is why gluten-free oats are handled separately and priced accordingly.
The words that hide an allergen
Allergens are emphasised in the ingredients list, but they are not always spelled the way you would say them out loud. These are worth knowing by sight:
- Milk — casein, caseinate, whey, curd, ghee, lactose. "Lactose-free" still contains milk protein, so it is not safe for a milk allergy.
- Wheat — semolina, durum, spelt, kamut, farina, rusk, couscous.
- Egg — albumen, ovalbumin, lysozyme, globulin.
- Sesame — tahini, gingelly, benne.
- Soya — edamame, tofu, textured vegetable protein, miso.
- Sulphites — declared only above 10 mg per kg or litre, so dried fruit and wine can contain them below the labelling threshold.
- Celery — celeriac, and very often hiding inside the word "stock" or an unspecified "spices".
A two-minute routine that catches most of it
Turn the packet over. Read the ingredients list, not the front. Look for the emphasised words. Read any precautionary line underneath it and decide what you are comfortable with. Check whether a "free from" claim is the legally defined kind or a loose recipe statement. And re-read the label of anything you buy regularly every few months, because manufacturers reformulate without announcing it, and a product that was fine last year may not be now.
Where meal planning fits in
Label-reading is the last line of defence, not the first. The work that comes before it — finding a week of meals that avoid your allergens in the first place, then turning them into a shopping list — is the part that grinds people down, because it never ends.
That is the job Fork It was built for. It is a free Android app that plans your week around any of the 14 UK allergens: pick yours, and it aims to keep them out of every recipe it generates, checking ingredient by ingredient rather than filtering on a loose label. You get a week of dinners, lunches that use up the leftovers, and one shopping list in the words UK supermarkets actually use.
What it cannot do is see inside the packet you pick up in the shop. No app can. So Fork It tells you what every honest tool should: always check the label.
For the allergens themselves and where each one hides, see our guide to the 14 allergens UK food labels must declare. If more than one person in your house has an allergy, our guide to meal planning with multiple food allergies covers cooking one dinner everyone can eat.