nutrition labels for spice blends & seasonings

The short version

A spice blend is used a pinch at a time, and the FDA labels it that way. The 1/4 teaspoon reference amount pushes calories, fat and carbs below rounding thresholds, so the panel is dominated by one number: sodium, if the blend contains salt. Get the serving and the allergens right and a seasoning label is simple — but the allergen part surprises people.

Serving size — the part people get wrong

Reference amount: 1/4 tsp (about 0.5 g) for herbs, spices and seasoning blends. Dry seasoning blends and spices use a very small reference amount — around 1/4 teaspoon (roughly 0.5 g). Salt-based rubs and larger-application seasonings may use 1/2 to 1 teaspoon depending on how they're used. The tiny serving is why most of a seasoning panel reads 0, with sodium the exception when salt is present.

Allergens you have to declare

This is the surprise: seasoning blends carry allergens far more often than makers realize. Wheat appears as a flow agent or filler and in soy-sauce powder; celery, mustard and sesame show up in blends (and while celery/mustard aren't US Big-9, sesame is); soy arrives via soy sauce powder or soybean oil anti-caking; and 'natural flavors' can hide milk. Read every sub-ingredient of every component — a Cajun or ranch blend often declares wheat and milk.

The Nutrillius generator auto-detects the Big-9 allergens from your ingredient list and writes the Contains statement for you — useful even if you only need the ingredient list.

Claims you can (and can’t) make

Every nutrient-content claim on the package has a legal threshold the panel must back up. For spice blends & seasonings, the ones that come up most:

• Sodium free — < 5 mg sodium per serving — salt-free blends qualify at 1/4 tsp.
• No salt added / unsalted — no salt or sodium-containing ingredient added — a strong selling point for seasoning.
• Low sodium — ≤ 140 mg per serving — easy at a 1/4 tsp serving even with some salt.
• No MSG — must be literally true, including no ingredients that contain MSG (like autolyzed yeast extract) if you make the claim.

The builder shows which claims your recipe already qualifies for as you tweak it — see the rounding rules for how the declared numbers behind those thresholds are set.

A sample spice blends & seasonings label

Everything Bagel Seasoning

INGREDIENTS: Sesame seeds, sea salt, dried garlic, dried onion, poppy seeds.

Contains: Sesame.

Serving size 1/4 tsp (0.6g)

Sesame — a Big-9 allergen since 2023 — is the ingredient makers forget to declare on seasoning. At 1/4 tsp the panel is mostly zeros with a modest sodium figure.

Where spice blends & seasonings makers slip up