The hospitality industry in Abu Dhabi is entering an important new phase in healthy menu planning.
With the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) listing Circular No. 7/2026 – Implementation of Mandatory Minimum Healthy Food Options in Hotel Restaurant Menus, hotels and food & beverage operators need to pay greater attention to the nutritional composition of the food they serve.
For hospitality businesses, this is more than simply adding a few dishes labelled “healthy” to a menu. The challenge is identifying whether recipes actually meet the applicable nutritional criteria and having reliable data to support those decisions.
This is where SEHHI Menu Compliance & Healthy Recipe Analytics can play an important role.
What is SEHHI?
SEHHI is a public-health programme developed by the Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre (ADPHC) to encourage healthier food choices across Abu Dhabi.
The SEHHI Healthy Menus programme identifies healthier food options using nutritional criteria. According to ADPHC, foods carrying the SEHHI designation are lower in fat, sugar and salt and higher in fibre compared with other foods of the same type.
ADPHC has also established a classification process that considers nutritional factors including calories, total fat, saturated and trans fats, sugar, salt and fibre. Food establishments can submit food-item information through a digital platform for nutritional analysis against SEHHI criteria.
What does the new requirement mean for hotel restaurants?
DCT Abu Dhabi’s 2026 circular introduces mandatory minimum healthy food options for hotel restaurant menus. DCT’s official circular listing confirms the new requirement as part of its current tourism-sector regulatory framework.
For applicable establishments, the requirement creates two important menu-planning considerations:
1. Adult Menus
Hotels and relevant food & beverage outlets need to ensure that healthy options are available across menu categories.
This means culinary teams need to look at their menus category by category rather than simply counting the total number of healthy dishes.
For example:
- Appetisers
- Main courses
- Side dishes
- Desserts
A menu may contain several nutritionally strong main courses but still need attention if another required category has no qualifying healthy option.
2. Children’s Menus
Children’s menus require even greater attention because the requirement calls for a significant proportion of menu items to meet the applicable healthy criteria.
This creates a practical challenge for hotels: children’s menus need to be reviewed at the recipe level, not simply based on how a dish is marketed or described.
Why Recipe Data Matters
One of the biggest challenges for hotels is that the recipe in the kitchen may not always be identical to the recipe stored in a costing system.
Ingredient quantities can change. Portion sizes can vary. Cooking methods can be modified. Oils, sauces, dressings and garnishes may be added during preparation.
These seemingly small differences can significantly change the nutritional composition of a dish.
For example, changing the quantity of:
- Cooking oil
- Butter or cream
- Cheese
- Sugar
- Salt
- Sauces
- Dressings
- Processed ingredients
can alter calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, sodium and other nutritional parameters.
Therefore, accurate recipe data is the foundation of meaningful healthy-menu analysis.
From Recipe Analytics to SEHHI Readiness
At TouchPoint Gourmet Consultants (TGC), we see an opportunity to combine food science with recipe analytics to help hospitality businesses prepare for this new environment.
Our approach can follow a structured process:
Recipe → Nutrition Analysis → SEHHI Criteria Assessment → Recipe Reformulation → Validation → Documentation → Menu Implementation
Step 1: Recipe Collection
Hotels provide their existing recipes, including ingredient quantities, preparation information, yields and portion sizes.
Step 2: Nutrition Analysis
Each recipe is analysed to calculate its nutritional composition using structured ingredient and food-composition data.
Step 3: Healthy Menu Assessment
Recipes can then be assessed against the applicable SEHHI nutritional parameters to identify potential healthy menu candidates and recipes that may require modification.
Step 4: Recipe Reformulation
Where a recipe does not meet the desired nutritional profile, TGC can work with culinary teams to identify opportunities to modify ingredients, quantities, cooking methods or portion sizes while maintaining the dish’s culinary identity.
Step 5: Menu-Level Assessment
Rather than looking at individual dishes in isolation, hotels can evaluate their entire menu structure.
For example:
|
Menu Category |
Healthy Options |
Requirement |
Status |
|
Appetisers |
2 |
Minimum required |
✓ |
|
Main Courses |
3 |
Minimum required |
✓ |
|
Sides |
0 |
Minimum required |
Review |
|
Desserts |
1 |
Minimum required |
✓ |
|
Children’s Menu |
5 of 8 |
50%+ |
✓ |
This type of dashboard can help culinary and management teams immediately identify where action is required.
Why This Matters for Hotel Culinary Teams
Healthy menu compliance shouldn’t become a last-minute exercise.
Hotels frequently operate multiple restaurants, cafés, lounges, room-service menus, children’s menus and seasonal menus. A large hotel group can therefore have hundreds or thousands of recipes requiring assessment.
Manually analysing each recipe can be time-consuming and difficult to maintain.
A digital recipe analytics approach allows businesses to:
Analyse thousands of recipes
Identify potential healthy options
Compare nutritional values
Flag recipes requiring reformulation
Monitor menu-category coverage
Maintain structured recipe documentation
Generate nutrition reports
This transforms compliance from a one-time exercise into an ongoing data-management process.
Children’s Menus Need Special Attention
Children’s menus deserve particular consideration.
Hotels may have children’s versions of dishes already available on adult menus. In some cases, existing adult recipes can potentially be adapted through appropriate portion sizing or recipe modifications.
Instead of developing an entirely separate menu from scratch, culinary teams can identify suitable existing recipes and assess whether they can be adapted to meet the applicable healthy-menu criteria.
This can reduce development time while creating a more consistent culinary offering.
SEHHI Compliance Is Not Just About Nutrition Numbers
For hotel operators, the broader objective should be to create a sustainable process for healthy menu development.
That means bringing together:
Culinary teams + Nutrition expertise + Recipe data + Technology + Documentation
When these elements work together, healthy menu development becomes part of the hotel’s normal recipe-management process rather than a separate compliance exercise.
How TGC Can Help
TouchPoint Gourmet Consultants provides food analytics solutions for the hospitality and food industry, including:
Nutrition Analysis
Detailed nutritional analysis of recipes and food products.
Recipe Analytics
Large-scale analysis of recipes using structured ingredient and nutritional databases.
Healthy Recipe Assessment
Identification of recipes that may be suitable for healthy-menu programmes and areas requiring reformulation.
Recipe Reformulation Support
Data-driven recommendations to help culinary teams improve the nutritional profile of recipes.
Menu-Level Analytics
Assessment of menus across multiple categories, outlets and children’s menus.
Reporting & Documentation
Structured nutrition reports and recipe documentation to support internal review and compliance processes.
The Future of Hospitality Is Data-Driven
The move toward healthier menus represents a broader shift in the hospitality industry.
Consumers increasingly want to understand what they are eating, while regulators and public-health organisations are encouraging food businesses to provide healthier choices.
For hotels, this means nutritional data is becoming an increasingly important part of recipe management.
The question is no longer simply:
“Do we have a healthy dish on our menu?”
The more important question is:
“Can we demonstrate, using accurate recipe and nutritional data, which dishes qualify as healthier options?”
At TGC, our goal is to help hospitality businesses answer that question with data.
SEHHI Menu Compliance & Healthy Recipe Analytics
Helping Abu Dhabi’s hospitality industry serve healthier, analyse smarter and build more transparent menus.
Important Note
SEHHI criteria, DCT requirements, applicability, exemptions and implementation procedures may change. Hotels and F&B operators should always refer to the latest official DCT Abu Dhabi and ADPHC requirements and obtain appropriate regulatory guidance. TGC’s analytics and reports are intended to support nutritional assessment, recipe development and compliance preparation and should not be represented as official regulatory approval or certification.
Official references: DCT Abu Dhabi – Circulars · Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre – SEHHI Programme