The All-Natural Debate

Healthy, wholesome and natural are the watchwords of our age, and in a five-a-day consumer culture that increasingly shuns over-processing and artificial additives, slapping epithets like “farm fresh” or “traditional” on the label implies certain values, every bit as much as it commands a higher price. In August 2010, Ben & Jerry’s became the latest big name to be forcibly reminded that when “natural” actually isn’t, many brand-loyal buyers can often be inclined to take it as a personal betrayal.

At least 48 of their 53 “all natural” flavours contain “ingredients that either don’t exist in nature or that have been chemically modified”, according to a report from the not-for-profit watchdog, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). With the September 2010 announcement that the offending label will go, to re-focus attention on the company’s use of welfare-certified sources and socially responsible suppliers, this particular spat seems to have ended, but clearly not without reigniting the simmering debate over where the line lies between “natural” and “modified” ingredients.

A question of definition

The effective lack of an agreed and comprehensive legal definition undoubtedly contributes to the confusion. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offers a description of natural flavourings that expressly includes the “essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis” and fermentation products of what most people would understand as a “natural” material.

For natural ingredients themselves, it has no formal definition, and although the UK’s Food Standards Agency has issued guidelines on the use of the word in relation to foods, beyond that there is little to go on.

The situation is exacerbated, of course, by consumer perception. All the evidence suggests that the whole food issue is being taken a lot more seriously, with ethical, health and nutritional aspects growing in importance in the product selection process – and here, “natural”, however hazily understood, equates with healthiness and goodness. Despite the enforced thrift of the global economic downturn, it seems the appeal of such foods has largely weathered the storm. Even, for instance, with a “mackerel war” mooted between the EU and Iceland, UK fisheries protection vessels interdicting over-quota Norwegian trawlers and elements of the Scottish whitefish fleet said to be on the brink of ruin, added-value “natural” fish retains its appeal – and its market.

Alan Stewart, factory manager at Downies, one of Scotland’s premier family-owned fish processors, describes the distinction between natural and artificial as a simple one. “All of our quality smoked fish is smoked the natural way,” he says. “What that means, is that no food dyes are used in any part of the process.”

However, what may be straightforward enough for single-ingredient foods, such as hot-smoked salmon, is potentially much more complicated for those that are not, as consultant biochemist, Dr Clare Miles explains. “What constitutes ‘natural’ goes to the heart of so many of the big food questions,” she says. “You start off with a discussion of what seem clearly defined issues like organic production or GM-crops, but pretty soon you get into stuff like enzymatic and microbial or fermentation processes. They’re all natural in themselves, obviously, but would a typical supermarket shopper really think their products were – even if they are in legal terms?”  

Natural, safe and healthy?

Miles points to alkalised cocoa – the most frequently used of the non-natural ingredients for which Ben & Jerry’s were taken to task – as an example. “Alkalising makes cocoa less bitter, more soluble and improves its colour for use in chocolate, but it also destroys most of the flavanol content – which is a major antioxidant. So, on the one hand, cocoa is undeniably natural, but now you can argue that it’s lost some of its health benefits and I think when consumers say “natural” foods, “healthy” is always somewhere there in the subtext.”

This aspect may prove an increasingly important one as an aging demographic burgeons within the population. Dr Tina Sampalis, chief scientific officer of Neptune Technologies and Bioresources – the company behind Neptune Krill Oil (NKO) – believes that a goal-orientated attempt to mitigate the effects of cardiovascular, inflammatory and neurological disease lies behind much of the current drive towards natural foods. 

If so, then the potential market is shaping up to be big; forecasts indicate that over half the UK’s population will be over 50 by the end of the next decade, and by 2030, a predicted 70 million Americans – a fifth of the populace – will be over 65. Meeting that demand, however, even with a natural and nutritionally beneficial product is not necessarily straightforward, as Sampalis explains. “According to European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) regulations, functional food and dietary supplements can only be commercialised at the daily dose established as safe, which is not always necessarily the effective dose. Fortunately, the daily dose accepted by EFSA as safe for NKO is also the one proven to be effective in all clinical studies.”

Natural, safe and healthy are clearly linked issues in regulatory thinking, but in some ways, it is an approach that can risk obfuscating as much as it elucidates in the shopping public’s consciousness. There is, after all, little shortage of things which are unquestionably “natural”, but could not remotely be described as “safe”. Conversely, for many other ingredients, as CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson said in respect of the alkalised cocoa, partially hydrogenated soybean oil and corn syrup used in Ben & Jerry’s products, “they’re safe – but it’s a stretch to call any of them natural.” It is not only the industry that struggles to come to terms with the inevitable lack of clarity.

Perhaps the real problem is that while “natural” remains essentially undefined objectively, subjectively it is entrenched in the mind of the consumer and comes mixed in with a concept-cloud of loosely allied issues, such as animal welfare, ethical production, fair trade and sustainability – and these are, of course, emotive areas. Until some agreed definition emerges that will hold sway with regulators, manufacturers, the public and the global industry alike, then the debate seems destined to smoulder on, and Ben & Jerry’s are unlikely to be the last company to periodically stoke the flames.