Serving Size and Rounding Rules (US FDA): Practical Guide

The serving size on a US Nutrition Facts panel comes from the FDA's Reference Amount Customarily Consumed (RACC) for your food category, not from the portion you would like to advertise. It is declared as a household measure followed by the metric weight in brackets. Every value is then rounded by the increments in 21 CFR 101.9(c), which are not the Canadian ones.

Serving size

The RACC

The FDA publishes a RACC for each food category: the amount of that food people typically eat at one sitting. Cookies are 30 g, for example. Your serving size is based on the RACC and expressed in a household measure that suits the food (cups, tablespoons, pieces, slices), followed by the metric equivalent in grams or millilitres.

Package rules

A package that holds less than 200% of the RACC is a single serving, and the whole package must be labelled as one serving. A 55 g cookie is one serving, because 55 g is under twice the 30 g RACC. (For foods with a RACC of 100 g or 100 mL or more, a package between 150% and 200% may be labelled as one or two servings.) A package that holds 200% to 300% of the RACC needs a dual-column panel: one column per serving and one for the whole package.

Why it matters

Per-serving values are total nutrients multiplied by serving size over total yield. Change the serving and every number on the panel changes. A serving picked to flatter the sodium line is the first thing a retailer's compliance check will question.

Rounding rules

From 21 CFR 101.9(c):

• Calories: under 5 show as 0; up to 50 round to the nearest 5; over 50 to the nearest 10
• Total, saturated, and trans fat: under 0.5 g shows as 0 g; under 5 g to the nearest 0.5 g; 5 g and over to the nearest 1 g
• Cholesterol: to the nearest 5 mg; 2 mg to 5 mg may show "less than 5 mg"
• Sodium: under 5 mg shows as 0 mg; 5 mg to 140 mg to the nearest 5 mg; over 140 mg to the nearest 10 mg
• Total carbohydrate, dietary fibre, total sugars, added sugars, and protein: to the nearest 1 g; under 1 g may show "less than 1 g"; under 0.5 g may show 0 g

Where the FDA differs from Canada: the US allows "less than 1 g" for carbohydrate, fibre, sugars, and protein, where Canada rounds to 0 g or 1 g and shows protein under 0.5 g to the nearest 0.1 g. Values from a Canadian table cannot be copied onto a US panel.

Common mistakes

• using the portion you sell as the serving size when the RACC says otherwise
• labelling a package under 200% of the RACC as two servings
• changing the recipe yield and reusing the old serving, so the per-serving values drift
• hand-editing a value in a design tool to make it "look right", which breaks the rounding
• reusing an old export after a recipe change

What to do in Nutrifax

1. Look up the RACC for your category and set servings or yield to match.
2. Check ingredient quantities and units.
3. Generate the US panel. Nutrifax applies the rounding in 21 CFR 101.9(c).
4. If the values differ from your last print run, find what changed in the recipe before you print.
5. Export PDF or PNG, test print, and save the export with the recipe version.

Related pages

• US FDA Nutrition Label Requirements for Small Producers
• When Nutrition Labels Are Required in the US
• How to Generate and Print Nutrition Labels in Nutrifax
• FDA nutrition label generator

Sources

• FDA: Reference Amounts Customarily Consumed (RACCs)
• eCFR: 21 CFR 101.9 (Nutrition labeling of food)
• FDA: What's on the Nutrition Facts Label
• FDA: Industry resources on changes to the Nutrition Facts Label

Disclaimer

Educational content only; not legal advice. Confirm the final label against current regulations for your product and jurisdiction.