Create an Ingredient
This Quick Start assumes two things: (1) you have gathered the information you need for creating an Ingredient, including a spec sheet, certificate of analysis or other documentation with the nutrition breakdown of your Ingredient; and (2) you have successfully obtained a login and password from your admin.
Note: Genesis Foods will automatically save your work every few seconds, but there are some actions that require a manual save.
First steps
Log in to Genesis Foods with your email and the password you received from your admin.
On the Dashboard, click the New Ingredient button.
Names & Tags
Enter a name for your Ingredient using the established naming best practices agreed on by your organization. The Name entry can accommodate letters and numbers. Example: Vegetable, raw, sweet potato, 8”
Enter an Alias, if necessary. An Alias is a shortened or more user-friendly version of your Ingredient’s name. Aliases will be used in the Ingredient Statement and on reports. Example: sweet potato
Enter or select a tag. Tags can be used to simplify future searches. To enter a tag, start typing the name of the tags in the search space and either select the tag from the search returns OR type out the entire tag name and press Enter on your keyboard.
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Enter Nutrient Values
Select a weight and unit of measure. Ninety-nine percent of the time, this will be 100 grams, but you should use whatever is on your spec sheet, certificate of analysis or other ingredient nutrient documentation. 100 grams has been pre-populated for you.
Select U.S. Label Nutrients Mandatory or U.S. Label Nutrients All. U.S. Label Nutrients Mandatory is the list of 15 nutrients required on your U.S. Nutrition Facts. The U.S. Label Nutrient All list contains all mandatory and voluntary nutrients and is a much longer list. However, if you will be using any voluntary nutrients on your Label, you should definitely use this list.
Populate the nutrients with their values. If you have selected the U.S. Label Nutrients All list, it’s helpful to use the search to find the nutrients you wish to populate. Note: The nutrients are listed in the order they will appear on your Label. When you enter a nutrient value, that nutrient’s %DV will be automatically calculated for the recommendation you have selected.
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Conversions
If you creating a liquid ingredient, here is where you will enter the Volume Conversion. The program will use this conversion to display an appropriate liquid amount on the Label. You can only add one liquid conversion per ingredient.
If you want to add common household or other non-weight measures (for both liquids and solids), you would do that under Unit Conversions
Expand the conversion you want to add
Enter the volume or unit amount per the gram weight.
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Allergens
Regulations require the declaration of any allergens present in your food product. For consumer-safety purposes, Genesis Foods must assume that all Ingredients contain all allergens. Your tasks are to (a) remove any allergens not in your Ingredient, (b) select the appropriate type or species when necessary and (c) decide if you want to declare the possibility of allergens that may have contaminated the food during processing.
Scroll to the Allergens section and click Edit Allergens.
Add any Allergens you know are present in this Ingredient. You can also declare any “May contains” allergens if your Ingredient could be contaminated with Allergens during processing.
Notes, Images, Attachments and Custom Fields
By completing the above tasks, you now have an Ingredient you can use to build a Recipe and its compliant Label. The remaining functions — Notes, Images, Attachments and Custom Fields — are not required for labeling and packaging, but are here to help you customize and organize your foods.
Notes
Anything you want to add to this Ingredient that there isn’t an existing field for can go here. It is a simple text-entry field.
Images
The image you upload here will appear at the top of the Ingreident page.
Attachments
You can attach any type of document to this Ingredient, including (and we recommend this) your spec sheet or COA.
Custom Fields
You can associate up to three Custom Fields with your work and pin them to the top of your page. The Custom Fields will appear regardless of what you’re currently working on.
Once you have finalized your Ingredient, you or the authorized user can click Approve. Genesis Foods will save the ingredient in that state, and you will not be able to edit the Approved version If, however, you open this Approved Ingredient and make any changes to it, Genesis Foods will automatically create a new editable version and call it something like: “V1. Draft.”
Build a Recipe
Generate a LabelThe primary use of Genesis Foods is to generate regulatory-compliant Nutrition Facts labels for your food-product package. This is done in three steps:
Creating an Ingredient by populating the Ingredient form with nutrient values
Building a Recipe from the Ingredients you create
Generating a Label from the Recipe
The Quick Start Guides will walk you through each of these steps. Going through all of them should take about 15 minutes in total. For more in-depth instruction, please see the individual chapters.