Nutrition Facts table formats
Reference information

Compendium of templates for Nutrition Facts tables and list of ingredients

To help label designers and the food and packaging industry meet format specifications of the FDR, Health Canada developed a Compendium of templates for Nutrition Facts tables and list of ingredients which is available for order on the Health Canada website. The templates are the actual-size graphic illustrations of the various versions of the Nutrition Facts table permitted by the FDR. Also included are a few sample templates for the list of ingredients that would meet the graphic specifications as set out in the FDR.

The templates were created in Adobe InDesign CC 2015 and are available in INDD, IDML and PDF format. The IND files can be opened and edited in Adobe InDesign CC 2015 or newer. The IDML files can be opened and edited in older versions of Adobe InDesign (CS4 and later).

It is recommended that the templates be edited in Adobe InDesign, however conversion to other software packages is possible. A third-party extension (for example, ID2Q by Markzware) can be used to convert the InDesign files to Quark Xpress files.

If the Acrobat (PDF) files are viewed or printed using Acrobat Reader or opened in commonly used artwork software packages such as Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand, the conversion may not be perfect and will cause alterations in the graphic elements. Consequently, before using the converted templates, it is important to check them against the graphic specifications in the Nutrition Labelling – Directory of Nutrition Facts Table Formats document posted on the Health Canada website which sets out all measurements for the NFTs.

The templates in the Compendium of Templates for Nutrition Facts Tables and List of Ingredients only contain mandatory information. If additional information is included in the NFt, it will not fit in the templates without altering the measurements. The outer measurements of the NFt, as listed on the templates, may change if additional information is declared or if fonts other than Helvetica or Arial are used.

The FDR set the graphic and technical requirements for how nutrition information must be displayed in the NFt [B.01.450, B.01.460, FDR, and Nutrition Labelling – Directory of Nutrition Facts Table Formats]. This covers aspects such as order of presentation, dimensions, spacing and the use of upper and lower case letters and bold type. For more details, refer to Presentation of the Nutrition Facts table page.