Does Nutri-Grade Apply to Snacks in Singapore? What the Label Actually Covers
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If you have ever flipped a packet of chips over in the supermarket aisle hunting for that colourful A-to-D grade — the one you see on bottled drinks — you are not alone. Plenty of Singaporean shoppers assume the Nutri-Grade label already covers snacks, or is about to. The honest answer is more useful than the rumour: it doesn't, and the change coming in 2027 still won't touch your crackers or chips. Here's what Nutri-Grade actually grades, what's changing, and how to read a snack packet without waiting for a label to do the thinking for you.
The short answer: Nutri-Grade is a drinks label
Nutri-Grade is a mandatory front-of-pack labelling scheme for beverages. According to the Health Promotion Board (HPB), it has applied to pre-packaged drinks since 30 December 2022, and was extended to freshly prepared drinks — your kopi, teh, bubble tea and smoothies — from 30 December 2023. It grades a drink from A (green) to D (red) based on two things only: sugar and saturated fat. Drinks graded C or D must display the mark; for A and B it is optional, and advertising is banned for anything graded D.
Snacks, biscuits and crackers sit entirely outside this scheme. There is no Nutri-Grade letter for a packet of potato chips, because Nutri-Grade was built around Singapore's sugar and diabetes challenge — where, as HPB notes, more than half of residents' daily sugar comes from beverages in the first place.
What's changing in 2027 (and what isn't)
This is where the confusion usually creeps in. In April 2025, the Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed that from the middle of 2027, Nutri-Grade labelling and advertising rules will be extended beyond drinks. But the extension is narrow and specific. It covers 23 sub-categories of what MOH calls SSSIO: salt, sauces, seasonings, instant noodles and cooking oils sold in retail settings.
The driver here is sodium and saturated fat, not sugar. MOH points to National Nutrition Survey findings that nine in ten Singapore residents exceed the recommended 2,000 mg of sodium a day — on average consuming about twice that amount — while saturated fat makes up around 36% of total fat consumed, above the recommended ceiling of 30%. Salt, sauces, seasonings and instant noodles are the biggest sodium contributors; cooking oil is the biggest saturated-fat one. Those are the targets.
Snacks and crackers are not on that list. So if anyone tells you your favourite biscuit is “about to be Nutri-Graded,” they are mixing two things up. It is worth knowing, so you don't sit around waiting for a grade that isn't coming.
Nutri-Grade vs the Healthier Choice Symbol
Here's the label that does already apply to packaged snacks: the Healthier Choice Symbol (HCS), the pyramid-shaped tick you have seen on cereals, sauces and biscuits. HPB says it now appears on roughly 4,000 products across more than 100 food categories. The two schemes are easy to confuse, so the difference is worth pinning down:
- Nutri-Grade is mandatory (for C and D drinks), applies to beverages, and grades on sugar and saturated fat.
- The Healthier Choice Symbol is voluntary, applies to both food and drinks, and flags a product as a better pick within its own category — a wholegrain biscuit against other biscuits, say — rather than an absolute stamp of health.
An HCS tick is a genuinely handy shortcut, but it is a relative one. It tells you a product compares well to its shelf-mates; it does not mean “eat as much as you like.”
How to grade a snack yourself
Since no traffic-light letter is coming to your snack shelf, the nutrition information panel on the back is your real tool. Three quick habits go a long way:
Read per 100g, not per serving. Serving sizes are chosen by the manufacturer and are often smaller than what you would actually eat in one sitting. The per-100g column lets you compare two packets on equal terms.
Watch the sodium. With most of us already over that 2,000 mg daily line MOH flags, snacks are a sneaky contributor. Compare the sodium figure between two options and favour the lower one — a habit that matters more than memorising any single number.
Scan saturated fat and sugar together. These are the same two nutrients Nutri-Grade uses to judge drinks, and they are just as worth watching in solid snacks — especially in anything deep-fried or cream-filled.
Do that, and you are essentially running your own Nutri-Grade check on the foods the scheme doesn't reach.
Snacking with your eyes open
No label can make snack choices for you, but knowing what each one covers means you are never waiting on a grade that isn't coming. At HexaCrunch, we make baked — never fried — brown-rice crackers made with cricket protein, and we would rather you read our panel than take our word for it: higher in protein, and lower in the saturated fat that comes with deep-frying. If you are curious, our Try-All 3-Pack is an easy place to start. Flip it over first — we are happy to let the numbers do the talking.