Confusion and food safety risks: The unintended consequences of clean label demands

By Caroline Scott-Thomas

- Last updated on GMT

Natural or not?
Natural or not?

Related tags Food safety Food Nutrition

The concept of naturalness may be a major purchase driver, but there is disagreement about what ‘natural’ or ‘clean label’ really means – and about how to create foods that are both natural and safe.

Head of food safety at Leatherhead Food Research, Evangelia Komitopoulou, told delegates at the recent Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) conference in Orlando, Florida that consumers give confused answers about what is meant by ‘natural’, paralleled in the food industry by confusion about what is meant by its answering term, ‘clean label’.

 “Clean label is a term mostly used by industry. But what consumers are looking for is simplicity and honesty in labeling. There is a lot of confusion in the industry about what clean label means,”​she said.

Komitopoulou said that according to Leatherhead’s own market research, ‘natural’ or ‘all-natural’ was the top priority for food choices for consumers in the five developed markets surveyed, including the United States, while ‘organic’ was ranked ninth.

“However, when asked to explain what natural meant, 58% said it meant organic,”​she said.“…How can we expect consumers to know what natural means when we don’t really know what it means ourselves?

“What was clear was that people were voting for simplicity.”

Clean labels = simple labels

She said that this general desire for simple label statements means that for many consumers there is an overlap between products with reduced saturated fat, salt, and sugar, and what they think of as clean label products, which may not exist for industry.

“While reduced sugar, salt and fat are very different issues to clean label, consumers don’t see it that way,”​she said.“…But it’s often forgotten that some simple compounds in a product are not just there for taste.

“If you reduce salt below 3.5% in a meat or fish product you are going to end up with a botulinum risk, and if you reduce the sugar below 65% in a preserve product you are going to have a spoilage issue.”

“Safety is a given”

Senior vice president of food safety and quality assurance at major foodservice company US Foods, Jorge Hernandez, said that he too had found customers’ definitions of words like fresh, healthy and natural to be very subjective. Their definitions included local, GMO-free, trans-fat free, animal welfare certified, low calorie, organic, low fat, and low cholesterol, among others.

“There is a lot of assumption and in most of them food safety is a given,”​he said.“One customer said that you know local is safe because it has to be, because you don’t want to make your neighbor sick…That was her definition.”

Hernandez added:“We need to educate people that fresh doesn’t equal safe, and healthy doesn’t equal safe. Those things are important but safety needs to be verified.”

Food safety first

Komitopoulou said that despite the food safety challenges that can be associated with reformulation, “natural is here to stay”.

“Before you start to reformulate, you need to ask yourself why you are doing it…For small and medium size companies, you have to do your homework. There are food safety experts out there that can help you. We really need to consider food safety right at the beginning of the reformulation process.”

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