About the Healthier Choice Symbol Programme
Making healthier choices while grocery shopping may be rather challenging at times. To solve this, we have introduced the Healthier Choice Symbol. The Healthier Choice Symbol on packaged food products indicates that they are healthier options, and are an easy way for consumers to tell which food products are better for their diet than others! This empowers the individual to make informed food choices.
Today, the Healthier Choice Symbol can be seen on about 4000 different food products, spanning across over 100 food categories such as convenience meals, sauces, beverages and breakfast cereals.
You can view the list of HCS products
here.
Offering Healthier Choice products also opens up the opportunity to reach more consumers through the
Eat, Drink, Shop Healthy Challenge, which rewards consumers for choosing healthier options, thereby promoting your brand and growing the sales of your products.
To find out if your company’s product is eligible to carry the Healthier Choice Symbol, take a look at the Healthier Choice Symbol Nutrition Guidelines.
If your company intend to sell HCS products in schools, please note some products might need to meet additional requirements. Please refer to the Healthy Meals in School Programme.
Healthier Choice Symbol Application
Healthier Choice Symbol (HCS) applications are done via HCS Online and the only login mode is via Singapore Corporate Access (CorpPass). All companies (including foreign companies) would need to have a CorpPass account.
Logging into HCS Online
1. CorpPass is a corporate digital identity for businesses and other entities (such as non-profit organisations and associations) to transact with Government agencies online. Owned by the Ministry of Finance and managed by Government Technology Agency (GovTech), CorpPass gives you greater control, security and efficiency for your corporate online transactions with the Government.
2. Please select a representative from your company as CorpPass Administrator and register your company on CorpPass. The role of a CorpPass Adminstrator is to manage the company’s CorpPass account, including management of company’s users, adding e-services and assigning roles in CorpPass. You may refer to available CorpPass User Guides for more information on how to register for CorpPass.
3. The company’s CorpPass admin has to add HCS Online e-Service and assign roles to Users in CorpPass.
4. Please refer to the below step-by step User Guides for CorpPass HCS Online e-Service:
- For companies without CorpPass account please click here.
- For companies with existing CorpPass account please click here.
5. Upon successful set up of company’s CorpPass account and HCS Online e-Service Access, the company may proceed to log in to HCS Online to start submitting your product application.
Applying for HCS
You can refer to the following User Guides for detailed instructions on the online submission.
1) User Guide to Onboarding
2) User Guide to HCS Application Submission
3) User Guide to Advertising Materials Submission
You may also refer to the demonstration videos for the HCS online application submission.
In summary, here are the key steps:
- Submit the application together with a nutrient analysis report of your product. The nutrient analysis report must be obtained from an independent accredited laboratory using approved methods, for example those accepted by the Association of Official Analytical Chemists. The nutrient analysis report must contain the nutrients needed to evaluate the application. Here is a guide that helps you find out a list of accredited laboratories under the Singapore Accreditation Council-Singapore Laboratory Accreditation Scheme (SAC-SINGLAS).
- If your company product qualifies for the use of the symbol, your company will need to sign a Licence Agreement with us. Once licensed, your company will be permitted to use the symbol on its product packaging and for advertising, promotion and marketing purposes. All materials using the logo will have to be approved by us. You may refer to the HCS Licensor’s Usage Specifications for the HCS colour, font and usage guidelines.
- Your company is responsible for ensuring that its packaging labels and advertising materials do not go against the Singapore Food Regulation. You can refer to the Singapore Food Agency’s website for more information.
For more comprehensive information on the HCS application procedure, and nutrition labeling, please download A Handbook on Nutrition Labelling (Singapore). You may also refer to the following checklists and FAQ while applying for HCS
1) Checklist for HCS Application Submission
2) Checklist for HCS Product Packaging Artwork
3) Checklist for Advertising Materials Artwork for HCS Products
4) HCS FAQ
Licence Agreement
The company can start to use the HCS logo on approved HCS products when a valid Licence Agreement is generated. To maintain validity of the Licence Agreement, the company would be required to conduct a yearly product review via HCS Online. The Product Review exercise includes updating the company’s HCS product list and declaring that the company’s products still meet the HCS nutrient guidelines and there is no change in the content of the products.
Companies which fail to complete the Product Review process within the stipulated time period will result in the Licence Agreement being terminated. The company will lose its rights to carry the HCS on its products and these products will be removed from our HCS database. It is considered a trademark infringement if these products continue to carry the HCS logo.
Do note that if your product has undergone product reformulation, you will need to submit a new application through HCS Online.
You may refer to this Product Review User Manual, Product Review demonstration video and Product Review FAQ on how to complete the Product Review.
Updates
To stay relevant, we perform continuous review of guidelines to reflect the nutritional concerns of the population.