PrintableCharts

THE 9 MAJOR FOOD ALLERGENS

the foods US law singles out by name, and the two ways a label is allowed to say so

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Free

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Formats
A4 · A3 · A2
What you get
Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject
food · kids · reference · classroom

Based on FDA rules for FALCPA (2004) and the FASTER Act (2021, effective 2023), which cover FDA-regulated packaged food sold in the US. Meat, poultry and egg products (USDA-regulated), alcohol (TTB-regulated) and most unpackaged retail or food-service items sit outside these rules, and FDA has not set a safe threshold amount for any allergen.

“MAY CONTAIN” ISN’T THE LAW SPEAKING

“May contain milk” or “produced in a facility that also uses peanuts” read like part of the same law, but FDA says plainly that such advisory statements are not required by law.

They’re a voluntary flag for accidental cross-contact on shared equipment. The nine names above are the ones the label is legally forced to carry.

On the sheet

  • Based on FDA rules for FALCPA (2004) and the FASTER Act (2021, effective 2023), which cover FDA-regulated packaged food sold in the US. Meat, poultry and egg products (USDA-regulated), alcohol (TTB-regulated) and most unpackaged retail or food-service items sit outside these rules, and FDA has not set a safe threshold amount for any allergen.
  • Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
  • Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

  • Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
  • All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
  • White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
  • Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
  • No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 9 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

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