Natasha's Law for Home Cooks (UK Allergen Labelling Guide)

Natasha's Law (in force since 1 October 2021) requires every PPDS food item — prepacked for direct sale — to carry a full ingredient list with the 14 major allergens emphasised. For UK home cooks it applies to anything you batch-cook and pack before the customer orders. Made-to-order food doesn't need full labels, but you still have to inform customers about allergens.

This guide covers what Natasha's Law actually requires, the test for whether your food is PPDS, the 14 allergens, how to label correctly with examples, and what to do differently for cooked-to-order food.

What Natasha's Law actually requires

For any PPDS food item, the package must carry — clearly visible before purchase:

• The name of the food (specific enough that a customer can tell what it is — "Chicken biryani" not just "Curry")
• A full list of ingredients, in descending order by weight at the time the dish is made
• All 14 major allergens emphasised within the ingredient list — bold, underlined, capitals, or contrasting colour. Pick one and use it consistently.

The information must be on the package itself, on a label attached to it, or directly with the food in a way the customer sees before buying. A separate menu booklet or a website listing isn't enough — the label is required on the actual food.

The law was introduced after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, a teenager, died in 2016 from an unlabelled sesame allergen in a sandwich. The old rules allowed food prepared on the same premises to be sold unlabelled; Natasha's Law closed that loophole. Inspectors take it seriously.

Does it apply to you? The PPDS test

PPDS stands for Prepacked for Direct Sale. Food is PPDS when all three of these are true:

• It's packaged before the customer orders or selects it
• It's sold from the same business that packed it
• It's sold from the same location it was packed (or the location it's offered to consumers)

For a UK home food business, examples that are PPDS and need full Natasha's Law labels:

• Meal-prep boxes you batch-cook on Sunday for collection through the week
• Curries portioned into containers ahead of a Saturday pickup
• Cookies, brownies, or cakes pre-bagged for grab-and-go
• Frozen portions you pre-pack and label for collection
• Bottled sauces, jams, or marinades sold from your home

Examples that are not PPDS, so don't need a full label (but you still must provide allergen information — see next section):

• Meals cooked and packaged after the customer orders
• Sandwiches or salads assembled when ordered, then packed
• Hot food handed over uncovered or wrapped at point of sale
• Open buffet at a supper club where customers serve themselves

The grey area: food cooked the night before for next-day pickup. If you've packaged it before the customer orders, it's PPDS even though you might think of it as "made to order". The timing of the packaging is what matters, not the timing of the cooking.

The 14 allergens you must emphasise

UK law recognises 14 major allergens. Every one that appears in a dish — including in derivatives, sauces, garnishes, and sub-ingredients — must be emphasised in your ingredient list:

• Celery — including stalks, leaves, seeds, and celeriac
• Cereals containing gluten — wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut, and their hybrids
• Crustaceans — prawns, crab, lobster, crayfish
• Eggs
• Fish
• Lupin — found in some flours and bakery products
• Milk — including butter, cream, cheese, yoghurt
• Molluscs — mussels, squid, octopus, oysters, snails
• Mustard — seeds, paste, oil, leaves
• Tree nuts — almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, brazil nuts, pistachios, macadamias
• Peanuts (technically legumes, listed separately)
• Sesame seeds — including tahini, halva, gomasio
• Soybeans — including soy sauce, tofu, edamame
• Sulphur dioxide / sulphites at over 10mg/kg or 10mg/L — common in dried fruit, wine, vinegars

How to label correctly — with an example

A correctly-labelled PPDS chicken biryani looks like this:

Chicken Biryani (450g)
Ingredients: basmati rice, chicken thigh, onion, tomato, yoghurt (milk), ghee (milk), ginger, garlic, green chilli, salt, garam masala (cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, bay leaf), turmeric, mint, coriander, lemon juice.
Made by Pickup Kitchen, 12 Example Road, London EC1A 1BB. Best before: 03/05/2026.

Three things to notice: the name is specific (not just "curry"); allergens are emphasised in bold inside the ingredient list (not in a separate "contains" section, though many businesses add one anyway as belt-and-braces); the sub-ingredients of the spice mix are spelled out rather than hidden behind "spices".

Common mistakes that fail an inspection:

• Hidden sub-ingredients. "Curry paste" or "spice mix" isn't enough — break out what's in it. If you're using a bought paste, copy its ingredient list onto yours.
• Listing allergens only in a separate "contains" line. Natasha's Law requires emphasis withinthe ingredient list. Adding a contains-line on top is fine; using it instead is not.
• "May contain" voluntary warnings without basis. Only declare what's actually in the food. "May contain nuts" is for genuine cross-contamination risk, not blanket cover.
• Outdated labels when recipes change. If you swap an ingredient, every existing label in the freezer is wrong. Rewrite or relabel.
• Tiny print. The label has to be legible. A handwritten label on a clear bag is fine; a 6-point font on a busy background isn't.

Made-to-order food — what's different

If you cook after the customer orders (and only pack at handover), you're outside Natasha's Law's strict labelling requirement. But UK food law still requires you to provide allergen information for the 14 allergens. There are two paths:

• Tell the customer at the point of sale. Verbal is allowed for cooked-to-order, but the law requires that you have written reference material to hand — usually an allergen matrix: a grid with each menu item on one axis and the 14 allergens on the other, with a tick or cross per cell. Print it, keep it accessible, train anyone who helps you.
• Show allergens against each menu item online. If you take orders through your website or store, listing the allergens (or dietary tags) with each dish is the cleanest way to satisfy the requirement before the customer ever asks. It also reduces the awkward at-handover conversation.

Even for made-to-order, write down what's in every recipe, with allergens flagged. Doing this once when you launch a menu is the difference between a calm inspection and a stressed one.

What happens if you get this wrong

Inspector findings are the everyday consequence: a deduction on your food hygiene rating and a written improvement notice. For repeat or wilful breaches, councils can prosecute under the Food Information Regulations 2014; fines are unlimited but typically run into the low thousands for small breaches.

The rare-but-real consequence is the one Natasha's Law was named for: a customer with an undisclosed allergy. The legal weight of that is severe and the moral weight is heavier. The cost of doing labelling properly is small enough that it's never the right place to economise.

Your next step

Spend an hour writing a recipe sheet for everything on your menu — every ingredient, every sub-ingredient, every allergen. From there, labelling is a copy-paste job, and your allergen matrix falls out of the same data. The full set-up timeline is in the home food business pillar guide; if you haven't registered yet, start with the legality overview.