Yes. According to the nutrition labeling laws in the US Code of Federal Regulations, “The FDA RECOGNIZES and ACCEPTS the use of electronic ingredient databases to compute nutritional values for product labels.” When preparing nutrition labels, the FDA requests that manufacturers make a good-faith effort to provide accurate label data.
The Genesis R&D software program and ingredient database are used by many manufacturers for the creation of FDA compliant Nutrition Facts and Supplement Facts panels for grocery stores, restaurants, and vending machines.
As best practice, we suggest that you review the Spreadsheet report for each of your Recipes. You may encounter nutrient fields that are not reported by the source of data (USDA, supplier, etc.). You want to ensure that you have populated all nutrient fields required for the label that you will be creating. Consider both mandatory label nutrients as well as those that you may be choosing to report voluntarily.
Keep back-up records of the formulations that you create in Genesis R&D to serve as your documentation. Save a pdf or other form of record that saves the analysis and label at that point in time (the Spreadsheet, Multi-column reports, and the View Label/Label Display combined provide helpful documentation). When working with Genesis, the data is live, so any changes to Ingredients or Recipes or a published update can potentially affect the analysis and label data. Consider printing or storing recipes or formulas with the ESHA Code and User Code fields displayed for each ingredient. This allows the data to be easily traced and evaluated if a label ever comes into question.
The ESHA database contains data from over 2,000 sources including USDA data, manufacturers, restaurants, and literature research. Our Nutrition Research Team runs data through a series of reviews and calculations to see that nutrient values add up and are correct. We do our best to maintain the highest quality database available.
For specific questions please contact the FDA at Consumer@fda.com or visit the FDA website at http://www.fda.gov/
Note: In the past, some organizations have submitted their databases for review by the FDA. This essentially means that the organization can market their database as having a stamp of "approval" from the FDA. According to FDA representatives, this service is no longer available.
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