ABU DHABI • 2026
Abu Dhabi SEHHI menu nutrition guide for hotels and restaurants
Abu Dhabi’s SEHHI programme covers calorie display and healthier menu choices, while DCT Abu Dhabi Circular No. 7/2026 adds mandatory minimum healthy-food options for covered tourism-licensed hotel and F&B outlets. Here is how recipe nutrition analysis fits into the operational work.
What is SEHHI?
The Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre describes SEHHI as a programme designed to support healthier food consumption across the Emirate. Its food programmes include SEHHI for Displaying Calories on the Menu and SEHHI Healthy Menus.
ADPHC explains that the calorie-display programme applies to displaying calories on menus in restaurants and food establishments, while the Healthy Menus programme uses the SEHHI logo to identify qualifying healthier choices.
What changed for hotels in 2026?
The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi lists Circular No. 7/2026 as “Implementation of Mandatory Minimum Healthy Food Options in Hotel Restaurant Menus.”
Published reporting on the circular states that covered adult menus must include at least one healthy option in each food category and that at least 50% of children’s menu items must qualify as healthy. It also reports a transition period through September 30, 2026, with full compliance from October 1, 2026.
Where recipe nutrition analysis fits
A hotel cannot assess a dish reliably without a controlled recipe. The practical work starts with ingredient quantities, nutrition profiles, measured finished yield and serving information.
For healthy-menu review, the F&B team also needs to identify the nutrient fields relevant to the current SEHHI criteria and resolve missing or questionable ingredient data before submitting a dish for formal verification.
- Standard recipe and current portion
- Ingredient nutrition source and food match
- Measured final cooked yield
- Calculated nutrients on the required basis
- Supporting notes for unusual ingredients or substitutions
Calorie display and healthy-menu qualification are not the same task
Calculating calories produces an energy value for the menu item. Healthy-menu qualification is a separate assessment against programme criteria.
A dish can therefore have a valid calorie calculation without automatically qualifying for a SEHHI logo. The official verification process determines whether a menu item meets the applicable healthy-menu standard.
How a hotel F&B team can prepare
Start by inventorying every current menu by outlet and category. Identify which dishes already have controlled recipes and which still depend on informal chef knowledge or spreadsheets with missing source information.
Prioritise the dishes intended to satisfy the mandatory healthy-option requirement, then complete recipe standardisation, ingredient mapping, yield measurement and nutrition review for those items first.
- Assign an owner for each outlet’s recipe data.
- Freeze a reviewed version of each candidate healthy dish before submission.
- Track verification status separately from calculation status.
- Create a change-control step so approved dishes are not modified without review.
- Maintain enough qualifying options when menus are changed seasonally.
What KcalMap can and cannot do
KcalMap can support recipe nutrition calculation, ingredient evidence, yield and portion management, and preparation of structured analysis for review.
KcalMap does not issue SEHHI certification, determine official legal compliance, or grant permission to use the SEHHI logo. Those decisions remain with the relevant Abu Dhabi authorities and their current processes.
Sources and further reading
These references are provided so teams can review the underlying guidance and data documentation directly.
PUT IT INTO PRACTICE
Use the same principles inside KcalMap.
Build recipes, map ingredient data, record yield and review nutrition per portion or per 100 g in one structured workspace.