“Clean label is no longer a trend. It’s a rule,” said Martijn Kesteloo of Innova Insights. As indicated by the recent launch of Campbell’s and Knorr Real Stock, reformulation to natural ingredients is rife.
Natural food colours have seen 300% growth, with products such as Cadbury’s Mini Eggs and Nestlé Smarties now using all-natural colours such as lemon yellow safflower and pink from red cabbage.
Caramel colour is the most used in the food industry and has seen massive growth in sales of its ‘burnt sugar’ lines with the move to natural. Consumer desire for a simple list of ingredients is certainly having an industry-wide effect, but at a cost to the consumer.
“These clean-label colours are not harmonised at EU level,” said Sebastian Romero Melchior, professor of food law. “So we have to go case by case in each member state.”
There is as yet no date set for clear EU guidelines to be issued regarding colours, though these now exist for flavours.
As Ray Waller of SVZ ascertained: “It’s cost that is the issue.” This was seconded by Dr Cathy Culver of PepsiCo in her presentation, saying: “Before starting new product development, you have to expect a tenfold increase in costs if you want an all-natural product. That’s quite a hike, and if the eventual market in which a product is to be sold (such as Mexico or Peru, for instance) cannot afford that, it may not be worth pursuing.
“My marketing team think I have a whole range of natural colours at my fingertips and can take out Azo dyes without changing the appearance of a product, with no loss of stability and no need for different packaging to protect the contents.
“You also need to check availability of natural ingredient supply and that it will be sustainable for continuous production. You need to talk with suppliers early and also check microbial load against every parameter such as the temperature at which a drink may be stored, or it may fail in the field.
“People forget that using colouring foodstuffs for natural colour frequently has a flavour overflow, say from sweet potato or beetroot. Everything in the NPD kitchen is not as simple as it sounds. It’s unusual to find a natural colour that is as stable as a synthetic and if you have fruit particles or a fat phase then it becomes more complex still.
“The more information you can gather before you start, the more success you are likely to have in development. For me, the holy grail is to have a patented natural blue colour to use in beverages. We’ve seen that this can obtained from gardenia and other anthocyanins, but it has not as yet been approved for use in the United States.”
Listen to my interview with Cathy Culver below.
.
Claire Phoenix is managing editor of Beverage Innovation magazine. Subscribe here.
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024