The UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention has capped sodium, sugar and fat in six everyday food categories. The list covers packaged bread, flavoured dairy drinks, yoghurt, salty snacks and processed cheese. Products that break the new limits face fines of up to Dh500,000, about $136,000 or £102,000.
The rules cover food made in the UAE and food imported into it, including goods sold by free-zone companies. Products made only for export are exempt.
The resolution sets two stages of limits for each category. Leavened bread must contain no more than 444 milligrams of sodium per 100 grams at first. That limit falls to 370 milligrams in the final phase, alongside parallel cuts to sugar and fat. Flat bread, salted crackers, nuts and seeds, pretzels and extruded snacks each carry their own sodium ceilings. Spreadable and other processed cheeses face separate sodium limits again. Sweetened milk drinks and flavoured yoghurt or laban must meet their own sugar limits instead.
Most categories have nine months from the resolution’s effective date to hit their first-phase limits. Processed cheese makers get longer: up to two years and three months, reflecting the extra reformulation work cheese needs. Every category must meet its final limit by 31 December 2030 at the latest. Shops can still sell stock already on shelves when the rules take effect, for up to a year or until it expires, whichever comes first.
Fines rise with repeat offences
Penalties start with a warning and rise to fines between Dh5,000 and Dh500,000, roughly $1,360 to $136,000. Authorities can also shut a non-compliant business for up to six months, a period they can extend, or cancel its licence outright. The ministry says the circumstances of each breach, and whether it is a repeat offence, will decide how harsh the penalty is.
Manufacturers can apply for a temporary exception to a first-phase limit. That route only opens if hitting the limit would mean cutting an ingredient by more than 20 per cent in one step. It only applies to products already on sale in the UAE before the resolution took effect. Companies must also commit to cutting that ingredient by at least 20 per cent during the exception period. Applications are due within 30 days of the resolution taking effect, and an exception never pushes back the 2030 deadline for final limits.
A diet the government says needs rebalancing
The ministry frames the measure as part of a wider push to cut diet-related disease. Earlier government surveys found that most UAE residents eat more sodium than recommended. Packaged bread, salty snacks and flavoured dairy drinks sit on nearly every Gulf kitchen table, including in the large South Asian and Keralite households that make up a big share of the UAE’s population. Reformulating these staples reaches more people, faster, than public awareness campaigns alone.
Some companies are already moving. UAE dairy producer Al Ain Farms Group has started cutting added sugar in some products ahead of the compliance deadlines. That early move suggests manufacturers expect the rules to tighten further, not loosen. The ministry has not detailed its day-to-day monitoring plan, but says federal and local health authorities will carry out checks once the first compliance deadlines fall due.
