Dubai Municipality, through the Dubai Central Laboratory, has rolled out a new nutritional grading system that assigns food products a rating from A to E, similar to the traffic-light-style labels used in several countries to simplify nutrition information. The goal is to help shoppers make more informed choices when picking products off supermarket shelves.

At the core of the system is laboratory verification: products go through testing at the Dubai Central Laboratory to confirm that the nutritional information printed on their packaging is accurate, before a final grade is assigned. That process turns dense nutritional data — sugar, fat, salt and calorie content — into a single, easy-to-read letter that shoppers can check in seconds while standing at the shelf.

The scheme also gives manufacturers and suppliers a way to formally validate their nutritional claims through official lab testing, which could help build consumer trust in both local and imported brands sold across Dubai's retail market.

The grading system builds on the Dubai Central Laboratory's existing microbiological and chemical food-testing capabilities, and forms part of the municipality's broader push to raise food-safety standards and consumer transparency across the city. With growing public attention to healthy eating in recent years, a simple, trustworthy grading label at the point of purchase has the potential to noticeably shift household buying habits in Dubai, giving an at-a-glance signal where reading a full nutrition label would otherwise take much longer.