Salt and sodium intake has been one of Japan’s most urgent public health challenges in recent years, exacerbated by the country’s abundant use of soy sauce and relevant condiments as staple parts of its cuisine.
Many innovations in the market have focused on solving this issue, such as Kirin’s electric spoon which intensifies the ‘umami’ flavour of foods to reduce the need for salt.
More recently, Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency (CAA) released the national Japanese Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labelling (FoPL) Guidelines, which were developed based on feedback from 10 rounds of public-private conversations with groups comprising consumers, food businesses and other related parties.
Although the guidelines cover general FoPL labelling requirements, CAA has made it clear that sodium intake control has been a major area of focus in the development of these.
“These guidelines aim to guide food manufacturers on how to display nutritional information in an accepted format and location that is easily accessible to consumers, [including] the amounts of key nutrients in their products,” CAA stated via a formal statement.
“One key aspect of these labels is that the amount of sodium in the product must also be converted to the dietary salt equivalent and displayed as such, as this is important information to help consumers reduce dietary salt intake.”
Notably, information on salt content is required to be highlighted in a double-lined box to draw consumer attention and awareness, as below.
These guidelines are still being implemented on a voluntary basis, meaning that these have not been made a mandatory part of Japanese food laws as of yet, but the CAA has highlighted that all food firms with dealings in Japan are ‘expected to actively promote these initiatives’ with their products and there is a strong likelihood of these becoming regulatory necessities in the future.
“From the perspective of promoting a healthy food environment, although food businesses are able to maintain these as voluntary efforts for the time being, [we] expect both these food firms and local governments to actively adopt of these guidelines,” the agency said.
“These guidelines strongly resonate with the third phase of the national Health Japan 21 strategy launched in 2024 which pushes for the creation of a healthy and sustainable food environment, so while they are not part of the Food Labelling Standards yet, they are an important way to facilitate the use of nutritional information and help local governments create a food environment that contributes to consumer health.”
There is also a strong possibility that these guidelines will become mandatory if uptake by local companies is not accelerated — a 2024 CAA survey revealed that only about 16% of food products in Japan display the required nutritional information on the front of their packaging.
“If any future confusion arises for consumers, we will consider whether to revise the guidelines, including the need for regulatory measures and the clarifying the handling of nutritional claims.”
Location, location, location
The new guidelines now also specify the optimal locations for the nutrition labels to be displayed for consumer convenience, as well as the display format of serving sizes.
“When the product is displayed horizontally, the serving size should generally be displayed in the upper left corner, but if this is difficult then it still needs to be fixed in a nearby location,” CAA stated,
“Regardless of location, the label must follow the formatting as outlined by the Japanese Nutrition FoPL Guidelines, and the serving size must always be displayed on the same side of the container or packaging [in the form of] number of pieces, number of bags, or by weight (XX grams).”
The agency has also committed to making swift revisions to these guidelines if ‘any understanding is found to be difficult for either consumers or food businesses’.
