Walk down a supermarket aisle in Abu Dhabi today and you might spot a small letter and colour badge sitting on the front of a milk carton or a bottle of cooking oil. That's the UAE Nutri-Mark label, the country's newest attempt at telling shoppers which packaged food is the better nutritional pick within its own category, at a glance, before anyone flips the pack over to read the fine print.
We distribute close to 700 SKUs across roughly 17 brands into every emirate, so we field a version of the same question from both directions: shoppers asking what the letter on a yoghurt tub means, and brand owners asking whether their next print run needs to change. This piece answers both. It explains what the UAE Nutri-Mark label actually is, how the grading works, which products carry it today, and what the scheme means for the people who make, distribute and buy packaged food here.
One thing worth saying before anything else: this is a description of a government labelling scheme, not health advice, and it isn't a claim about any specific product we sell or carry. Think of it as a walkthrough of a new piece of front of pack label UAE regulation, written the way we'd explain it to a buyer sitting across the table from us.
What Is the UAE Nutri-Mark Label?
Nutri-Mark is a front-of-pack nutrition label, a small graded badge printed on the front of a food package rather than buried in the nutrition table on the back. It uses a five-step scale running from Grade A, shown in dark green, through B, C and D, down to Grade E in red, roughly following the traffic-light logic that similar labels use elsewhere in the world.
The label was developed by the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council, working alongside Healthy Living Abu Dhabi, a public health initiative under the Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre. Officials describe it as the first front-of-pack nutrition grading system of its kind in the Middle East, built to sit next to the nutrition facts panel that every prepacked food already carries, not to replace it.
Here's the distinction that matters most, and the one shoppers ask about first. Nutri-Mark doesn't label a food "healthy" or "unhealthy" on its own. It ranks a product's overall nutritional composition against other products in the same category, so a Grade B breakfast cereal is a relatively better nutritional pick among breakfast cereals, not a blanket statement about cereal as a food group. That's a smaller, more specific claim than it sounds, and it's the reason the scheme can operate as a comparison tool rather than a medical judgement.
Who Created Nutri-Mark and Who Runs It Today?
The scheme traces back to the Abu Dhabi International Food Exhibition in November 2024, where the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council and the Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre first introduced the concept to the food industry. The Council formally approved the system in 2025, and it has since become the reference point most UAE food industry publications point to when they discuss front-of-pack labelling.
Day to day, Nutri-Mark is administered by the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council, known as QCC, which also runs the testing infrastructure behind it. QCC has built out dedicated lab capacity to back the grading system, treating verification as core infrastructure rather than something bolted on after the fact.
Two named officials have spoken publicly about the programme. Abdulla Al Yazeedi, QCC's executive director of strategic affairs, has said that a number of well-known local and international companies have already begun reformulating products and introducing healthier options even before the scheme becomes mandatory. Dr Ahmed Alkhazraji, director at Healthy Living Abu Dhabi, has described Nutri-Mark as a clear, easy-to-understand front-of-pack label that lets a shopper see a product's nutritional quality at a glance.
There's a federal layer forming behind the Abu Dhabi programme too. The Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology, which absorbed the old Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology, has proposed regulations covering front-of-pack labelling requirements built around the Nutri-Mark concept. What that federal proposal will require, and on what timeline, hadn't been finalised at the time of writing, so brands operating across more than one emirate should treat the Abu Dhabi scheme as the live reference point for now and watch for federal guidance to follow.
How Does the A-to-E Rating Actually Work?
Every Nutri-Mark grade is built from a set of nutrient components measured against a reference amount of the product, the same basic approach used by comparable front-of-pack schemes in the EU and elsewhere. A product with more favourable levels across these components earns a higher grade; a product with less favourable levels earns a lower one.
The Nutrient Components Behind Every Grade
The Nutri-Mark meaning behind each letter comes down to a set of measured components. Authorities describe the scoring as accounting for total fat and saturated fat, carbohydrates and sugars, protein, dietary fibre, salt, and overall calorie content. Stated plainly, a product lower in saturated fat, added sugar and salt, and higher in fibre and protein relative to others in its category, tends to land closer to the green end of the scale. A product weighted the other way lands closer to red.
What hasn't been published in enough detail to repeat with confidence are the exact numeric thresholds separating one grade from the next for each category. Those calculations sit inside QCC's official scoring tool, which manufacturers use directly rather than working from a public formula. Anyone building or reformulating a product for this scheme should treat QCC's own registration process as the authoritative source for exact cut-offs, not a summary written by a distributor or a compliance blog.
The measurement basis behind Nutri-Mark lines up with how the UAE already reports nutrition on pack. The mandatory back-of-pack nutrition declaration under UAE.S GSO 2233 is expressed per 100 grams or per 100 millilitres, and Nutri-Mark's scoring works from that same reference amount rather than a per-serving figure, which varies from brand to brand depending on how a manufacturer defines a serving. Working from a fixed 100g or 100ml basis is what makes the grade genuinely comparable from one pack to the next inside a category, since two yoghurt tubs with different serving sizes still get measured on equal footing.
A Category Comparison, Not an Absolute Verdict
So what does the grade actually tell a shopper? It answers one narrow question: among products competing in the same shelf category, which ones carry a more favourable nutrient profile right now. It doesn't measure taste, price, portion size or how a product fits into someone's overall diet, and it isn't a substitute for reading the full nutrition panel when that level of detail matters to a shopper.
Which Products Currently Carry the Label?
Nutri-Mark launched with a defined, limited scope rather than covering every aisle in the store at once. Reporting on the rollout has consistently pointed to five starting categories:
- Cooking oils
- Bread and pastries
- Sweetened beverages
- Dairy products
- Breakfast cereals and children's food
That's a deliberate choice. These five categories sit among the products UAE households buy most often and repeatedly, which means even a small shift in reformulation across them touches a large share of what actually ends up in a shopping trolley. Fresh produce, meat, and most ambient pantry staples outside these five groups aren't yet part of the scheme, though officials have signalled the categories will expand over time as the programme matures.
One detail worth flagging for brand teams: the initial approach applied Nutri-Mark across every product format inside these five categories in one pass, rather than phasing it in format by format. That's a different rollout shape from Singapore's Nutri-Grade system, which started with sweetened beverages only and expanded from there. The UAE went broader, faster, within a narrower set of categories.
Where You'll Actually See It (and Where You Won't Yet)
Geography matters more than most coverage of this topic lets on. Nutri-Mark is an Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council programme, and the visible rollout so far, physical shelf labels and the digital scanning layer alike, centres on Abu Dhabi retail. Reporting from mid-2026 describes consumers scanning a Nutri-Mark QR code through the TAMM app, Abu Dhabi's official government services platform, across four major retail chains.
That leaves an honest gap for anyone searching for a healthy food label that Dubai shelves can actually point to right now. As things stand, Dubai Municipality hasn't announced its own parallel front-of-pack grading scheme, and there's no confirmed date for Nutri-Mark itself becoming a fixture on every Dubai shelf. A shopper in Dubai may well encounter Nutri-Mark-labelled products, since many packaged goods circulate across emirates through the same distribution networks, but the scheme's home base and enforcement authority remain in Abu Dhabi for now.
For a distributor moving stock across all seven emirates from a single Dubai hub, that geographic split is a planning detail with real teeth, not a footnote. A pack destined for an Abu Dhabi retail chain may carry a Nutri-Mark grade; the same product moving through a Sharjah or Ras Al Khaimah route today generally won't need one, at least until the federal proposal from the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology settles into a firm nationwide requirement.
There's a wider Gulf angle here too. The UAE often functions as a proving ground for regulation that later spreads to Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, given how closely GCC food standards already track one another through the Gulf Standardisation Organisation. Nothing has been confirmed about other GCC states adopting a Nutri-Mark-style scheme of their own, and brands shouldn't plan around an assumption that one is coming. But a brand that gets its Abu Dhabi formulation and artwork right now is arguably better positioned if a similar front-of-pack idea does eventually travel to a neighbouring market, rather than treating this as a one-off, single-emirate exercise.
Is Nutri-Mark Mandatory Yet?
Short answer: not universally, and not on a single confirmed date that applies to every category and every emirate. Coverage from January 2026 describes the scheme running on a voluntary basis during a transition period, with QCC's own leadership framing current activity as reformulation happening ahead of mandatory requirements rather than because of them already being in force. Reporting from June 2026 still describes the system as voluntary at that point, even as its digital scanning features expanded.
That voluntary-but-moving framing explains something that otherwise looks contradictory across different sources. Some industry blogs describe Nutri-Mark as already mandatory. Direct reporting quoting QCC officials describes an active transition period with no confirmed universal deadline instead. The more reliable read, drawn from officials speaking on record, is that the emirate is deliberately giving manufacturers room to adjust formulations and packaging before enforcement tightens, rather than flipping a hard switch on a single date.
What is documented is real movement, not just talk. Al Ain Farms, one of the region's larger dairy producers, has publicly committed to cutting added sugar across flavoured milk, yoghurt and laban products, with lower-sugar versions expected on shelf by September 2026. When a major manufacturer commits to a reformulation timeline like that ahead of a mandatory deadline, it's a reasonable signal that the direction of travel is settled even where the exact enforcement date isn't.
How Nutri-Mark Compares to Front-of-Pack Labels Elsewhere
The UAE isn't inventing a new idea here. It's adapting one that a handful of other governments have already tested at scale, and the differences between those systems say something about where Nutri-Mark might head next.
Europe's version is called Nutri-Score, created by the French public health agency Santé publique France and first rolled out in France in 2017. It uses the same A-to-E, green-to-red letter scale as Nutri-Mark, calculated from a single overall score that weighs favourable nutrients like fibre, protein, fruit and vegetable content against nutrients to limit, including saturated fat, sugar and salt. A handful of other European countries have adopted the same scale since, each on a voluntary basis. Nutri-Score remains voluntary everywhere it operates, and the European Commission has not made it mandatory across the bloc despite years of debate.
Singapore took a different route with its Nutri-Grade system. Rather than launching across every food category at once, Singapore's Health Promotion Board started with beverages only, making the grading mandatory for pre-packaged and dispensed drinks from December 2022 and extending it to freshly prepared drinks, the kind sold at cafés and juice counters, from December 2023. Singapore also uses only four grades, A through D, and only Grade C and D beverages are required to display the mark. A and B remain optional, which nudges attention toward the products a health authority most wants shoppers to notice.
Nutri-Mark sits between these two models. It borrows Nutri-Score's five-letter scale and its logic of ranking a product against others like it, but it borrowed Singapore's instinct for launching across a defined set of everyday categories rather than one narrow product type. Whether the UAE eventually mirrors Singapore's mandatory-with-carve-outs approach, keeps things voluntary the way Nutri-Score has stayed in Europe, or lands somewhere in between is still an open question. What's clear is that the federal proposal from the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology gives the UAE a chance to pick whichever of those paths fits local retail and manufacturing conditions best, rather than copying either model wholesale.
How Nutri-Mark Differs From the Nutrition Panel Already on Every Pack
Every prepacked food sold in the UAE already carries a mandatory nutrition declaration under existing standards, most notably UAE.S GSO 9 for general food labelling and UAE.S GSO 2233 for nutritional labelling specifically. That panel, usually printed in a small table on the back or side of the pack, lists energy, protein, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars, fibre and sodium per 100 grams or per serving, in both English and Arabic. That requirement isn't new, and it isn't going away.
Nutri-Mark sits alongside that panel rather than replacing it. Where the existing nutrition declaration gives a shopper every number and expects them to do the comparison themselves, Nutri-Mark does a version of that comparison in advance and prints the answer as a single letter and colour on the front of the pack. One is a full data table for anyone who wants the detail. The other is a shortcut for anyone who doesn't have time to read it in the aisle.
For a brand, this means Nutri-Mark isn't a replacement compliance obligation. It's an additional, currently voluntary layer sitting on top of labelling rules that already apply to every product on shelf, enforced through the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology and, at emirate level, through bodies like Dubai Municipality and the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority.
Reading Nutri-Mark at the Shelf: A Shopper's Guide
So how should someone actually use this letter when they're standing in front of a chiller full of near-identical yoghurt tubs? A few practical habits make the label genuinely useful rather than just decorative.
- Compare within the same category only. A Grade B cooking oil and a Grade B breakfast cereal aren't measuring the same thing against each other, since the scoring accounts for what's typical within each category.
- Treat it as a tie-breaker, not the whole decision. Price, brand loyalty, taste preference and what a recipe actually calls for still matter. The grade is one more data point alongside those, not a replacement for them.
- Check the panel on the back when the grade alone doesn't answer the question. If two products both carry a Grade B, the full nutrition declaration still tells you where they differ, in sugar versus sodium, for instance.
- Remember the scope. Right now this mostly means oils, bread and pastries, sweetened drinks, dairy and breakfast cereals or children's food. A product outside those categories may not carry a grade yet regardless of its nutritional profile.
None of this turns grocery shopping into homework. It just means the letter on the front of the pack is doing one specific job, and knowing what that job is (and isn't) makes it more useful, not less.
What It Means for Brands, Manufacturers and Distributors
If you sell into UAE retail, the practical question isn't whether Nutri-Mark is interesting. It's whether your own range needs attention before the voluntary window narrows. A few things we'd tell any brand owner sitting across the table from us right now.
Steps to Get a Product Scored
- Confirm whether your product sits inside one of the five current categories: cooking oils, bread and pastries, sweetened beverages, dairy, or breakfast cereals and children's food.
- Calculate a nutritional score using QCC's official scoring tool, based on your product's actual fat, sugar, protein, fibre, salt and calorie values.
- Submit the required product information through QCC's registration process for review.
- Apply the resulting grade to pack artwork according to the Council's official design and placement guidelines.
- Revisit the score whenever a recipe changes, since reformulation shifts the grade and the artwork both need to move together.
Reformulation is the lever most brands reach for first, and it's often the more affordable one over time. Small, incremental changes, a modest reduction in added sugar, a swap toward a lower-saturated-fat oil, a small bump in fibre, can move a product up a grade band without a full recipe rebuild. Al Ain Farms' publicly stated sugar reduction across several dairy lines is a useful reference point for the kind of change that's actually moving grades in practice, not a hypothetical.
The other lever is honest labelling rather than reformulation, and that's a legitimate choice too. A product that scores a C or D isn't non-compliant or banned. It carries a lower relative grade in its category, the same way it would under any comparable scheme elsewhere. What brands should avoid is layering their own separate health or nutrition claims on top of a Nutri-Mark grade, since UAE food-claim rules under the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology and enforcement bodies like Dubai Municipality already take a narrow view of what a pack is allowed to promise, and a second, unofficial claim sitting next to an official grade invites exactly the kind of scrutiny a brand doesn't want at the border.
For distributors, the practical work is coordination rather than formulation. Multi-emirate range plans now need a note on which SKUs are Abu Dhabi bound and whether Nutri-Mark artwork applies to that specific run, since the same product moving through a different emirate's retail network may not need the grade on pack at all yet. Getting that wrong either means unnecessary print costs on stock that didn't need the artwork, or missing an expectation a major Abu Dhabi retail chain now has for the categories it covers. If you're weighing whether your own range needs a look before the transition window narrows, talk to our team before your next print run goes to press.
What About HORECA, Foodservice and Institutional Buyers?
Everything above describes a retail shelf scheme, and that's exactly where it currently lives. Hotels, restaurants, catering kitchens and cloud kitchens buying through a distributor don't generally see a Nutri-Mark grade on the ingredients they order, since bulk food-service packs, catering cartons and bulk oils typically fall outside standard retail packaging and, by extension, outside the current five consumer categories.
That doesn't mean the scheme is irrelevant to a foodservice buyer. A hotel breakfast programme built around a branded, retail-packaged cereal or a bottled juice line may well be sourcing a product that does carry a grade, and a catering menu that lists a specific packaged brand by name inherits whatever that pack shows on shelf. Chefs and procurement teams building menus around recognisable retail brands, rather than bulk commodity ingredients, are the ones most likely to field a guest question about a grade they've seen at the supermarket.
For now, the more direct HORECA impact is upstream: if a manufacturer reformulates a retail line to chase a better grade, the foodservice version of that same product, sold in catering pack sizes, sometimes follows the same recipe change even without carrying a label of its own. A buyer negotiating a new supply agreement has a reasonable question to ask a manufacturer: does the catering pack match the retail formulation, or is it still running the older recipe. That's a sourcing conversation, not a labelling requirement, but it's one the scheme has quietly put on more procurement agendas than the label itself would suggest.
Key takeaways
- The UAE Nutri-Mark label is a front-of-pack A-to-E grading system developed by the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council with Healthy Living Abu Dhabi, ranking products against others in the same category rather than issuing a blanket health verdict.
- Grades are built from fat and saturated fat, carbohydrates and sugars, protein, fibre, salt and calories, though the exact numeric thresholds sit inside QCC's official scoring tool rather than a public formula.
- Five categories carry the label so far: cooking oils, bread and pastries, sweetened beverages, dairy products, and breakfast cereals or children's food.
- As of mid-2026, the scheme runs on a voluntary basis during a transition period, centred on Abu Dhabi retail chains and the TAMM app's QR-scanning feature, with a federal proposal from the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology signalling a possible wider rollout ahead.
- The label sits alongside, not instead of, the mandatory back-of-pack nutrition declaration every prepacked food already carries under existing UAE standards.
- Brands already reformulating, such as Al Ain Farms' publicly stated sugar reduction across several dairy lines, suggest the direction of travel is set even where a firm nationwide mandatory date isn't.
Front-of-pack labelling schemes tend to start narrow and grow, and Nutri-Mark looks to be following that pattern rather than breaking from it. What started as five categories on Abu Dhabi shelves in 2025 already has a federal proposal attached to it a year on, and that trajectory is worth watching whether you're a shopper deciding between two yoghurt tubs or a brand owner planning next year's packaging run. For more on the food labelling UAE 2026 brands are adjusting to, our blog tracks the categories that matter most to brands selling here, and Bagason is always glad to talk through what a specific change means for your own range.
Frequently asked questions
What is the UAE Nutri-Mark label?
The UAE Nutri-Mark label is a front-of-pack nutrition grading system developed by the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council with Healthy Living Abu Dhabi. It grades a packaged food from A (dark green) to E (red) based on its nutritional composition compared with other products in the same category, sitting alongside the nutrition facts panel every prepacked food already carries.
Is Nutri-Mark the same as a health or safety certification?
No. Nutri-Mark is a comparative nutrition grade, not a food safety approval, a halal certification or a medical endorsement. It tells a shopper how a product's fat, sugar, salt, fibre, protein and calorie levels compare with similar products, and it says nothing about whether a food is safe, permitted, or recommended for any particular diet.
Which products currently carry a Nutri-Mark grade?
Reporting on the rollout points to five starting categories: cooking oils, bread and pastries, sweetened beverages, dairy products, and breakfast cereals or children's food. Products outside these categories, including fresh produce and most pantry staples, aren't part of the scheme yet, though officials have said coverage will expand over time.
Is the Nutri-Mark label mandatory in the UAE?
Not universally as of mid-2026. Coverage from Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council officials describes the scheme running on a voluntary basis during a transition period, with a federal proposal from the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology signalling a possible wider rollout ahead. No single confirmed mandatory date applies to every category or every emirate yet.
Will I see Nutri-Mark on products in Dubai, not just Abu Dhabi?
The visible rollout, including the QR-code scanning feature in the TAMM app, is centred on Abu Dhabi retail chains. Dubai Municipality hasn't announced a parallel scheme of its own, though products carrying a Nutri-Mark grade can still turn up on Dubai shelves since many packaged goods move across emirates through shared distribution networks.
How is the Nutri-Mark grade actually calculated?
Authorities describe the score as weighing total fat and saturated fat, carbohydrates and sugars, protein, dietary fibre, salt and calories, measured per 100 grams or 100 millilitres. The exact numeric thresholds separating each grade sit inside the Quality and Conformity Council's official scoring tool rather than a published public formula, so manufacturers calculate and register scores directly with the Council.