Fortified foods in the EU: how Regulation 1925/2006 governs adding vitamins and minerals

If you add vitamins or minerals to a food or drink in the EU — a fortified cereal, a vitamin water, an enriched plant-based milk — you're operating under Regulation (EC) No 1925/2006. It's the rulebook that decides which nutrients you may add, in what chemical forms, and how you have to declare them. For fortified food and beverage makers, understanding it is the difference between a compliant product and a reformulation order.

What the regulation covers

Regulation 1925/2006 harmonizes the addition of vitamins, minerals, and certain other substances to foods across the EU. Annex I lists the vitamins and minerals that may be added; Annex II lists the permitted chemical forms (sources) for each. If a nutrient or form isn't on those lists, it isn't allowed to be added — which makes the annexes the first thing to check when you design a fortified product.

The maximum-level question

The regulation provides for maximum amounts of added vitamins and minerals to be set at EU level, based primarily on safety — upper safe levels and intake from the wider diet. In practice, harmonized EU maximum levels for fortified foods have not yet been set, so national rules and guidance still play a large role, and a level acceptable in one country may draw scrutiny in another. Designing with safety-based reference levels in mind is the prudent approach.

Other substances and restrictions

Beyond vitamins and minerals, Annex III addresses other substances whose use is prohibited, restricted, or under scrutiny — the mechanism used, for example, to restrict certain botanicals. If your fortified product carries actives beyond the basic micronutrients, this is where you confirm they're permitted.

Labeling obligations

Fortified foods must declare the added nutrients in line with the regulation and general food information rules — the amounts present, expressed appropriately, alongside the standard nutrition declaration. The label has to reflect what the product actually delivers, which ties labeling tightly to the formula and its levels.

This is general information, not regulatory or legal advice. EU and national requirements change over time, so confirm current rules with the relevant authority or a qualified regulatory expert before relying on them.

Where Lemoniq fits

Lemoniq holds each fortified product as one structured formula — checking added nutrients and forms against permitted lists, watching levels against reference values, and generating the nutrition declaration from the same source — so a fortified food or drink stays consistent with Regulation 1925/2006 as it's developed and changed.

The takeaway

Regulation 1925/2006 sets what you can add to a fortified food, in which forms, at what levels, and how to label it. Building fortified products from a structured formula that checks those rules is what keeps them compliant as they evolve.

Lemoniq turns one fortified formula into compliant nutrient checks and labels from a single source. See how it works