Top Editors ... The big spring clean

Title: The big spring clean
Date: 30/06/2008
Autor: Lynda Searby

Under pressure from retailers, food manufacturers are on a mission to clean up their labels
The fall from grace of Procter & Gamble’s Sunny Delight is one of the most high profile examples of how consumers react when they feel they’ve been duped by the food industry.
Launched in 1998, Sunny Delight fast became the biggest selling soft drink in the UK behind Coke and Pepsi, as mums fell in love with its child-friendly image.
Then it all went wrong. The drink’s low-juice/high-sugar content attracted criticism from UK watchdog The Food Commission, as did its placement in chiller cabinets alongside pure juices.
Consumers began to lose faith in the product, and the much-hyped case of the toddler that allegedly turned orange after consuming Sunny Delight in large quantities didn’t help P&G’s cause. Sales slumped.
Besides serving as a warning to fellow manufacturers, the Sunny Delight episode fuelled consumer suspicions about what mysterious ingredients could be lurking in their food.
This climate of mistrust spawned a generation of ‘food detectives’ – consumers who painstakingly scrutinise labels for alien-sounding additives.
Last September, so-called ‘nasties’ came under the media spotlight again, when a Food Standards Agency-commissioned study linked certain additives with health and behavioural problems in children.
By then, recognising this growing suspicion represented not only a challenge, but also an opportunity to win consumer trust and loyalty, the UK’s major retailers were hard at work stripping out ‘nasties’ and replacing them with more natural alternatives, as well as reducing salt, sugar and trans fats.
Observers are divided on whether this clean label drive has spread beyond the UK.
“Demand for clean label is not only limited to the UK but is a global phenomenon. Customers are increasingly aware of the downsides of synthetic ingredients, and the market for natural ingredients is showing constant growth,” said Dushka Dimitrijevic, product manager with Slovenian ingredient firm Vitiva.
Others argue that outside the UK, while there might be a drive towards products with a more natural label declaration, the absence of retail pressure means the clean label movement hasn’t built up the same momentum.
“At the moment clean labelling is a phenomenon exclusive to the UK but I have no doubt that it is poised to spread across Europe,” said Simon Hunt, new product development manager at Dairy Crest Ingredients, whose clean label portfolio includes Freeze Dried Cheese, Buttermilk Powder, Whey and Frozen Pearls.
So what are these ‘nasties’ that retailers are looking to outlaw?
The term seems to encompass a broad spectrum of ingredients. First there are the obvious candidates:
artificial flavourings and colourings such as Tartrazine, Ponceau 4R and Sunset Yellow; MSG; and trans fats.
Beyond that, Adrian Short, director of clean label ingredient firm Ulrick & Short, lists modified starch, gums, phosphates and allergens as some of the ingredients in the firing line.
“Some manufacturers only want ingredients you would find in your kitchen cupboard; others want certain E-numbers removed. There’s also a drive to reduce salt, sugar and declarable allergens,” he said. But he admits there isn’t necessarily anything ‘wrong’ with these ingredients.
“Supermarkets want cleaner label declarations as they claim that’s what consumers want. Even if consumers aren’t sure what the ingredients do, retailers don’t want them to be put off by reading the pack. Take modified CLEAN LABEL starch, for example, it’s perfectly safe, it’s just an ‘unfriendly’ name,” he said.
Herein lies one of the issues at the core of the clean labelling debate: do consumers have any rational justification for which ingredients they want or don’t want in products?
Apparently not, if recent research by Leatherhead Food International is anything to go by. The research confirmed ‘high levels of consumer ignorance about additives’, according to senior analyst Nicole Patterson.
“Consumer knowledge about additives is limited, with many consumers believing, for example, that diet drinks are lower in additives than regular drinks,” she said.
In a further illustration of how confused and contradictory the situation has become, British Sugar has launched a clean label golden syrup that is ‘freefrom artificial colours and flavours’.
British Sugar is only responding to what it describes as ‘the growing need of customers for clean label products’, but the irony is that golden syrup is a stalwart among store cupboard ingredients. Does it really need cleaning up?
British Sugar says its standard golden syrup contains food grade flavourings to deliver a ‘buttery taste and aroma’ that may not be acceptable to customers supplying the likes of Marks & Spencer and Waitrose.
Regardless of this apparent confusion, if clean labels are what the omnipotent retailers want, clean labels are what they will get. And it falls to the ingredient manufacturing community to provide the solutions.
Ulrick & Short has had a head start on many of its competitors. Although the company is only in its ninth year, founders Adrian Short and Andrew Ulrick came from the starch industry and recognised the potential in clean label ingredients some time ago.
“Both of us saw the future as clean label as far back as 10 years ago. We could see the market was moving towards cleaner, more natural foods,” said Mr Short.
Chief among its range is Ezimoist, a hosphate replacer for use in cooked and cured meats and ready meals.
“Lots of processed meats contain phosphates, declared under unpronounceable names like ‘sodium tripolyphosphate’.
They help the meat maintain moisture and quality throughout its shelf life. They are nothing nasty but they are a chemical the retailers want to see removed,” he said.
Ezimoist, a tapioca starch, is said to mimic the properties of phosphates, so processors can get the same functionality, yield and quality. It is already used in products on sale in ASDA and Sainsbury’s.
ETENIA, a creaminess-enhancing texturiser born out of a partnership between DSM and AVEBE, is another ingredient that allows manufacturers to drop the ‘modified’ that often precedes ‘starch’.
“These ingredients have the advantage that they are labelled as ‘starch’ in Europe, which is seen as a key consumer driver for these types of ingredients. Also, as ETENIA is derived from potato starch rather than cereal starch it has a very clean flavour that doesn’t mask the delicate flavours in food products,” explained marketing manager Paul Sheldrake.
AVEBE is not the only starch giant to be busy building its clean label credentials. In November, National Starch Food Innovation launched Homecraft Express 760, a pregelatinised flour derived from wheat and designed to build viscosity and texture in instant soups, sauces, pancake mixes, batters and gravies.
Homecraft Express 760 enables a friendly ‘wheat flour’ back-of-pack declaration, and National Starch says existing starch users can incorporate it into recipes with no step changes.
However, as Mr Short points out, sprucing up a label isn’t always as simple as direct substitution.
“It’s not easy to take an ingredient out and put a different one in and still have the same product. Direct substitution happens maybe a third of the time, but if, say, a manufacturer wants to remove xanthan gum and modified starch and replace them with corn flour, direct substitution doesn’t work. It takes quite a bit of development,” he said.
Besides texturisers, preservatives represent another area where ingredient manufacturers have ‘cleaned up their act’.
At FiE, Danish ingredients firm Danisco announced its intention to sharpen its focus on natural labelling through a new label called Care4U, and introduced two new cultures under the label.
TEXEL NatuRed LT and HT are cultures for curing cooked meats such as ham, bacon or frankfurters.
“Traditionally, cooked meat products are cured using nitrate salts, an additive which is perceived negatively by consumers,” said Caroline de Lamarlière, Danisco’s European food protection meat industry manager.
She said TEXEL NatuRed results in products with the same colour, flavour and shelf life as those cured with nitrate salts.
Designed for a niche application, Vitiva’s AquaROX – an allergen-free and GMO-free rosemary solution – is said to offer a clean label alternative to sodium benzoate for prolonging the shelf life of fresh prawns.
“AquaROX could be used to replace sodium benzoate without compromising on organoleptic characteristics and microbial stability,” explained Ms Dimitrijevic.
“We have tested AquaROX on prawns sold in vacuum packs and in brine solutions. The results show that using the rosemary formulation at a concentration of 0.2% helps maintain their taste and colour for up to five days.”
The ingredient solutions are coming thick and fast, but is the problem they are responding to of the food industry’s own creation?