Defining the term ‘natural’ in the context of food products - Natural Food Additives, Ingredients and Flavourings - page 2

minerals that give nourishment, and some macromolecular polymers that our
stomachs digest and convert to low molecular weight chemical nutrients such as
sugars and amino acids. But the concept of a food additive, a chemical added to a
food, contradicts in the minds of some consumers that instinctive understanding of
natural, diminishing the wholeness and purity of the product, even though the
chemical added may itself be natural and may provide signifi cant benefi ts for the
consumer. This is especially the case if the additive has an E number. Many natural
food additives, such as beta -carotene (E160a) (also referred to as pro-vitamin A),
have an E number and as such are not regarded as 'clean label'.
The phrase 'clean label' has been coined to represent foods that do not
contain E numbers or chemical sounding names on the label in order to create
a simpler, more consumer-friendly ingredient declaration with more natural
and, for the consumer, comforting sounding ingredients. The phrase is also being
used in a wider context to include foods in which the fat, sugar and salt content
has been reduced offering a more healthy profi le. The fact remains that many
foods that are viewed as 'clean label' do contain added E numbers because it is
permitted to use the name in place of the E number. Hence 'extract of rosemary'
can be and is used instead of E392, and 'ascorbic acid' or 'vitamin C' instead of
E300, etc.
The industrial processing of food is also a mystery to consumers. Very few
have seen inside an industrial-scale food factory and consequently there exists a
considerable degree of suspicion about the 'black box' technology used by the
food industry. These issues introduce a number of complexities when searching
for a universally accepted defi nition of 'natural'.
The word 'natural' is defi ned in the Oxford English Dictionary as 'existing
in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind'. Likewise, the
UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) defi nes natural when applied to food
ingredients as 'produced by nature, not the work of man or interfered with by
man' (FSA 2008). These defi nitions have ramifi cations for food products and food
derived ingredients because they imply that anything that is processed is not
natural. This would mean that the wonderful smell of freshly baked bread, the
tempting aroma of frying bacon, the steak on the barbeque, smoked salmon and
fresh vegetables cooked to perfection are not natural. From a consumer viewpoint
this is not an acceptable defi nition because all the processed foods identifi ed
above would reasonably be considered to be natural by the average person and
consequently the chemical compounds formed during their processing would also
be deemed to be natural. If we accept the purist view of natural then most of the
fl avour chemicals formed in processed food that deliver immense pleasure and
satisfaction during eating would not be regarded as natural, because they are not
present in nature and have been formed by the action of man from precursors in
the raw food.
The majority of the food products we consume have been processed in some
way through cooking processes, preservation techniques, or the assistance of
microorganisms and enzymes. Even foods produced by nature such as fruits have
been selectively bred over millennia and have been infl uenced by humankind. In

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