For your business

Natasha’s Law for care homes

Meals plated for a resident are not PPDS. Snacks, cakes and sandwiches packed before someone chooses them — including items for a residents’ shop or a family visit box — are. Those packs need a name and a full ingredients list with allergens emphasised.

Reviewed 21 September 2026 against official guidance.SourcesNot legal advice.

Which of your products need a label

PPDS applies to food that is in packaging before the customer chooses it. For a care homes business that usually splits like this.

Needs a label

Sandwich packs made before an outing
Cake slices boxed for visitors to buy
Biscuit bags you fill and seal

Doesn’t

Meals plated in the dining room
Texture-modified meals served to a named resident, not sold packed

Allergen information still has to be available for these — just not as a printed label on the pack.

Typical products: packed sandwiches for outings, cakes sliced and boxed for the café trolley, resident-shop biscuits you bag on site, snack pots assembled in the kitchen.

What catches people out

Almost every wrong label in this trade comes from the same handful of ingredients — the ones with their own ingredients inside them.

Thickener and supplements

Some thickeners and nutritional supplements contain milk or soya. If they go into a packed product, they belong in the ingredients list.

A ‘soft’ cake that still contains gluten

Texture does not change allergens. Wheat in the sponge stays wheat.

Family treat boxes

A box you pack before the family chooses it is PPDS if it is food you sealed in advance.

The general rule behind all of these: how to label compound ingredients.

Example labels

Produced by the same engine that runs our free generator, so they show what the product actually does rather than an idealised mock-up.

Ingredients label · 60 × 40 mmExample

Victoria Sponge

Ingredients: WHEAT flour, Caster sugar, Free range EGGS, Butter (MILK), Raspberry jam (sugar, raspberries, gelling agent: pectin, acidity regulator: citric acid), Baking powder.

Example Bakery

Full worked example

Ingredients label · 50 × 30 mmExample

Chocolate Chip Cookie

Ingredients: WHEAT flour, Butter (MILK), MILK chocolate chips (sugar, cocoa butter, whole MILK powder, cocoa mass, emulsifier: SOYA lecithin), Caster sugar, Soft brown sugar, Free range EGG, Bicarbonate of soda, Sea salt.

Example Bakery

Full worked example

How it fits into the day

Keep the dining room and the shop apart

Plated meals stay on the care record. Packed items for sale or for a choice-from-a-fridge need labels.

One recipe library

The same sponge used at tea and in visitor boxes should have one ingredients list, updated when the mix changes.

Say who may pack

Staff who fill bags need the current label, not a handwritten ‘cake’ sticker.

Label size and printing

Large type helps. The legal minimum is still an x-height, and the ingredients list has to be complete even when you also print a plain-language name.

More on sizes and print formats: the PPDS label template.

What LabelClear doesn’t do

It organises what you tell it and keeps it consistent across your products. It cannot know about cross-contamination in your kitchen, a substitution made on a busy day, or an allergen a supplier added without saying. The checking is still yours.