News

Scoville Units: The 'Hottest' Label Trend?

30th Nov 2017

Food labelling is a fundamental part of retail FMCG, more consumers than ever look for clearer labelling, educating themselves about products and understanding contents by reading the labels – which is often the pivotal point of a purchase.

It’s also become a safety feature for many consumers. Many of us have witnessed the various recalls in the retail industry for packaging errors. Dairy products failing to mention dairy contents for lactose intolerant individuals. Products like peanuts failing to mention they “may contain nuts” and even the new wave of consumers exclusively seeking Vegan and Gluten Free products on sale.

Needless to say that both these regular and niche products can be physically and mentally dangerous to an unsuspecting consumer and require special labelling to demonstrate the edge they were developed for.

But there’s an area of food that has been overlooked in terms of safety and providing consumers accurate information on the quality of a product that's still quite vague also growing in popularity due to new reserach showing it's health benefits – but it’s not for everyone.

Spicy foods – Some of us hate it, some of us enjoy it in small doses and then there’s those who will push the limits for that ultimate heat rush. So when consumers see spicy food marked as “Medium” on the packaging and two chilli icons printed right next to it. How hot is it really? After all, it’s a personal preference and doesn’t display how hot that food actually is. Just like the calorie count on food packaging, everyones metabolism is different. Making the data printed almost obsololete to an consumer.

So is there a way of measuring accurately how spicy food can be?

Well, yes. Spice is the concentration of a chemical called “Capsaicin” within a product. Using whats called a "Scoville Scale" can accurately measure spice levels for a level playing field that everyone can understand.

We at Paramount Labels believe this simplified and effective system would give sufficient information to whether a product is deemed ‘hot enough’ or ‘potentially dangerous’ to a consumer using icons, colours and clearly labelled Scoville Units as a standard benchmark. This attached to the nutritional information table on food packaging could prove to be a vital piece of consumer information.

With our innovations dedicated to consumer demands this added transparency to product labelling is sure to spice-up shelf competition, for any further information about our food label re-designs and printing contact our team.