Whenever anyone of us sets foot inside a supermarket we are subjected to some of the most compelling psychological techniques known to marketing. Over many years the supermarkets, along with the food manufacturers whose products fill their shelves, have developed and fine tuned store layout, product placement and package design to the minutest detail in order to entice the consumer and maximise sales 1 . Some of the techniques employed are fairly obvious and, by now, well known to the customer. For instance we will all recognise the general layout of the aisles as they are more or less the same in every store you enter. You are immediately met with beautifully coloured fruit, next to the pre-packed sandwiches and fizzy drinks – perfectly placed for people who pop in to grab lunch. For staple foods like bread and popular products like alcohol you will have to walk to the far end of the store and pass all the special offers and cooking smells like rotisserie chickens – they hope you will feel hungry and buy something you did not intend to. Other techniques employed are not so obvious but nonetheless scientifically deadly. For instance, Cornell Food and Brand Lab Researchers Aner Tal and Brian Wansink recognised that eye contact increases brand trust, so are you aware that the eyes on the faces of the cartoon characters on children’s cereal boxes look down at an angle of 9.76 degrees so they look directly at small children, while the faces on cereal boxes designed for adults look straight ahead 2 . The height they are placed on the shelves means they make eye contact with their target consumer. This is clever stuff, and of course it is perfectly legal, after all the consumer is not being misled, just willingly guided! However, other techniques have, and are being employed where it could be argued that regulations are being stretched and the consumer deceived. Do you remember a juice drink called ‘Sunny Delight’? It was a marketing success story of the 1990s and early 2000s 3 . Children loved it and mums did not mind as it was a healthy orange juice drink – it must have been, after all it was placed in the chilled display unit with the other fresh juices. Not so, it was an entirely processed product full of colourings, flavouring, added sugar and thickener. Questions were asked of the director of the Asda brand, Penny Coates at the House of Commons Select Committee on Health about its positioning with other fruit juices to give an impression of it being healthy, which she conceded did not help 4 . Soon after this, combined with a story of a young girl turning orange after drinking too much, sales slumped. The current trend in supposedly healthy food is the ‘clean label’ Food fads are nothing new and the latest one is the rise of the minimally processed, free from additives, clean label food. Consumers are looking more and more at ingredients lists to decide if that product is something they want to eat. The problem is, are the claims misleading and does the consumer know what they mean anyway? Lies, damn lies and clean labels CLEAN LABEL www.newfoodmagazine.com 67 New Food, Volume 19, Issue 1, 2016 ■ David Taylor Senior Scientist, NoWFOOD Research Development Centre, University of Chester © Valentina Razumova / Shutterstock.com
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Whenever anyone of us sets foot inside a supermarket we are subjectedto some of the most compelling psychological techniques known tomarketing. Over many years the supermarkets, along with the foodmanufacturers whose products fill their shelves, have developed and finetuned store layout, product placement and package design to theminutest detail in order to entice the consumer and maximise sales1.
Some of the techniques employed are fairly obvious and, by now,well known to the customer. For instance we will all recognise thegeneral layout of the aisles as they are more or less the same in everystore you enter. You are immediately met with beautifully coloured fruit,next to the pre-packed sandwiches and fizzy drinks – perfectly placed forpeople who pop in to grab lunch. For staple foods like bread and popularproducts like alcohol you will have to walk to the far end of the store andpass all the special offers and cooking smells like rotisserie chickens –they hope you will feel hungry and buy something you did not intend to.
Other techniques employed are not so obvious but nonethelessscientifically deadly. For instance, Cornell Food and Brand LabResearchers Aner Tal and Brian Wansink recognised that eye contactincreases brand trust, so are you aware that the eyes on the faces of thecartoon characters on children’s cereal boxes look down at an angle of
9.76 degrees so they look directly at small children, while the faces oncereal boxes designed for adults look straight ahead2. The height they are placed on the shelves means they make eye contact with theirtarget consumer.
This is clever stuff, and of course it is perfectly legal, after all theconsumer is not being misled, just willingly guided! However, othertechniques have, and are being employed where it could be argued thatregulations are being stretched and the consumer deceived. Do youremember a juice drink called ‘Sunny Delight’? It was a marketingsuccess story of the 1990s and early 2000s3. Children loved it and mumsdid not mind as it was a healthy orange juice drink – it must have been,after all it was placed in the chilled display unit with the other fresh juices.Not so, it was an entirely processed product full of colourings, flavouring,added sugar and thickener. Questions were asked of the director of theAsda brand, Penny Coates at the House of Commons Select Committeeon Health about its positioning with other fruit juices to give animpression of it being healthy, which she conceded did not help4. Soon after this, combined with a story of a young girl turning orange afterdrinking too much, sales slumped.
The current trend in supposedly healthy food is the ‘clean label’
Food fads are nothing new and the latest one is the rise of the minimally processed, free from additives, clean label food. Consumers are looking more and more at ingredients lists to decide if that product is something they wantto eat. The problem is, are the claims misleading and does the consumer know what they mean anyway?
Lies, damn lies and clean labels
C L E A N L A B E L
www.newfoodmagazine.com 67 New Food, Volume 19, Issue 1, 2016
■ David TaylorSenior Scientist, NoWFOOD Research Development Centre, University of Chester
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denoting a ‘natural’ product which has had minimal or no processingalthough there is no accepted definition. Of course, claims made onlabels are subject to regulation and false or misleading claims may leadto legal action against manufacturers. Once again, this is nothing new, infact there have been prosecutions on just this point. As far back as 1983 Britvic Ltd were charged that they falsely described their product, a combination of orange juice, concentrated orange juice and water as‘natural’ contravening regulation 6(f) of the then Food LabellingRegulations 19845. On appeal in the High Court, Counsel for the appellantreferred to the much older case of Davenport v Apollinaris Co Ltd (1903)regarding the description of mineral water with added carbonic acid as‘natural mineral water’. Both of these cases demonstrate thatmanufacturers have for many years known ofthe benefit of describing their products as‘natural’ even where it is contentious.
In the European case of D’arbo it was the opinion of Advocate General Léger in theEuropean Court of Justice that strawberry jammanufactured by an Austrian company could not label its product as‘naturally pure’ considering that it contained pectin gelling agent andtraces of lead, cadmium and pesticides (albeit at safe levels)6. Mr Légerdecided that this reference was liable to mislead the consumer as to thecharacteristics of the foodstuff within the meaning of Article 2(1)(a)(i) ofDirective 79/112. He also cited the judgment in Gut Springenheide andTusky (1998) in deciding if a statement is likely to mislead, the nationalcourts must take into account “the presumed expectations of an averageconsumer who is reasonably well informed and reasonably observantand circumspect”.
Since these cases were decided, much of the law (although not all)concerning labels and claims made about food has been revised. Therelevant legislation on the matter is now found in several sources. Article16 of Regulation (EC) 178/2002 laying down the general principles and requirements of food law, requires labelling, advertising andpresentation of food should not mislead consumers. Article 7 of
Regulation (EU) 1169/2011 on the provision of food information toconsumers, prohibits Food Business Operators (FBO) from labelling,advertising or presenting their food in such a way as to mislead the consumer as to the characteristics of the food, to attribute to the food effects or properties that it does not possess or suggest the foodpossesses special characteristics which are in fact possessed by allsimilar foods. The Food Safety Act 1990 makes it an offence to describe,present or advertise food in a way that is false or likely to mislead theconsumer, and also prohibits the sale of any food not of the nature,substance or quality demanded by the consumer.
The word ‘Natural’ is now defined in the Regulation (EC) No1334/2008 on flavourings and certain food ingredients with flavouring
properties for use in and on foods, where atArticle 16 (4) it states that a food may only betermed ‘natural’ when the food, food categoryor a vegetable or animal flavouring source if theflavouring component has been obtainedexclusively or by at least 95% by weight/
weight from the source material referred to. That seems straight forward, but manufacturers are now moving away from this term andpreferring to use other words such as, ‘Fresh’, ‘Pure’ ‘Authentic’, ‘Simple’,and the list goes on7. And the fact there is a definition of ‘Natural’ mayexplain why manufacturers are moving away from that particular term infavour of the others!
Obviously it is difficult to know if the consumer is being misled andtherefore liable under the above legislation where no definitions exist forthe claim. If a manufacturer wishes to make claims such as these theycan refer to the Criteria for the use of such terms in food labellingproduced by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). However this documentoffers ‘General best practice advice’ only and is not legally enforceable. It is intended to assist FBOs to decide when these descriptions may (ormay not) be used; to help enforcement officers to provide consistentadvice; and to benefit consumers by encouraging the adoption ofconsistent, transparent labelling practices. This applies to pictorial
designs on packets as well as words, as thesehave been shown to be capable of misleadingthe consumer in just the same way.
Another huge area of growth in theconstruct of food labels is the ‘free from’revolution. An important part of that clean labeldesign, as well as stating that a product is‘simple’ and ‘minimally processed’ is to ensure itcontains no additives or allergens in what isoften a short ingredients list8.
Additives are regulated in the EU byRegulation (EC) 1333/2008 and they are definedas substances used in foods for different reasonssuch as to sweeten them, provide colour orprolong shelf life. Their use is subject to theregulation to ensure a high level of human healthand consumer protection. When displayed in aningredients list they must be referred to by theircategory name or their relevant E-number.Displaying an E-number in an ingredient list isthe food equivalent of committing commercial
New Food, Volume 19, Issue 1, 2016 68 www.newfoodmagazine.com
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Consumers are more and more looking at ingredients lists
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Allergens are certain substancespresent in foods that produce
an abnormal immune response in some people
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suicide as there is now an almost unshakeable beliefthat they are unhealthy, but it isn’t so9. Also, accordingto the food journalist Joanna Blythman manyadditives have been scrubbed up for the clean labelmarket. One such product is an anti-oxidant calledbutylhydroxyanisole or E300-21 which extends the lifeof the food. A chemically derived equivalent is nowavailable called extract of rosemary, but it is essentiallythe same chemical. Even the food industry acceptsthat natural additives are not much different from theirartificial counterparts, they are made using the samechemical techniques10.
Allergens are certain substances present in foodsthat produce an abnormal immune response in somepeople. There are 14 allergens recognised by theEuropean Food Standards Authority (EFSA) and thesesubstances provoke no response in the vast majorityof people, however consumers looking for a cleanlabel food are moving away from them, and there agood deal of ‘healthy eating’ experts out there tellingthem to do so – “Go Gluten Free” is the message onmore sites than I can possibly reference here.
The rise of the internet blogger has led to the creation of ‘healthyeating gurus’ some of which have many hundreds of thousands offollowers and presumably they are making a great deal of money, manyof them are making all sorts of unsupported medical claims about food.Gluten is a food to be avoided by sufferers of Celiac disease. However, a common claim made by ‘clean food’ bloggers is that the consumptionof gluten causes ‘Leaky Gut Syndrome’, and consumers should eat theirproducts to avoid the disease. This disease is not recognised byconventional medicine and there is little evidence connecting the vaguesymptoms to gluten consumption11.
There are potential legal consequences to making claims such as thisand their use is restricted by Regulation (EC) 1924/2006 on nutrition andhealth claims made on food. The loophole is the fact that they do notclaim their product cures any disease (which would be illegal), they claimthe conventional food causes an unknown disease and that their food willallow you to avoid that disease by replacing that food in your diet. It is alsoworth considering that to suggest a conventional food, such as a breadcontaining gluten causes a disease, would mean it was unfit for humanconsumption under Article 14 (2) of Regulation 178/2002, but this seemsto be skirted around. As they do not make a claim of their own food, theydo not need to supply any scientific basis for their position – it is literally upto us as individuals to decide if we think there is anything in what they say.
Finally, a word needs to be said about the use of enzymes in foodproduction. Once again an (EU) regulation governs their use, this time itis No 1332/2008. Enzymes are used to catalyse specific biochemicalreactions and are added to food for a technological purpose. Because they are biological molecules they are easily broken down ordenatured in the production process and therefore they areundetectable in the finished product. Consequently they do not have toappear in the ingredients list, as they are no longer present. This seemsacceptable, however what would your position be if you were Jewish andthe enzymes came from a pig? Or wider still, if you were a vegan and theenzymes came from any animal?
Any improvements to how our food is produced should beembraced. We often take our abundant supplies of food for granted andeven seek out ways to claim those supplies are not good for us and inventunsupported claims to sustain food industry fads. The food industry isconsumer driven, but the consumer only seems to want what they aretold they want. It may be that ‘healthy eating gurus’ should have tosubstantiate their claims scientifically, and manufacturers explain theirprocesses fully. Until then, consumers will continue to demand ‘cleanlabel’ food without having the first idea what that really means or if it isgood for them or not, and the law isn’t really geared up to stop it. It seemsthat caveat emptor still applies.
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www.newfoodmagazine.com 69 New Food, Volume 19, Issue 1, 2016
1. http://theplate.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/15/surviving-the-sneaky-psychology-of-supermarkets/
2. http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/op/cerealeyes
3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3257820.stm
4. Select Committee on Health, Examination of Witnesses, 4 December 2003 HC Q990
5. Amos v Britvic Ltd (23 July unreported)
6. C-465/98 Darbo [2000] ECR I-2297
7. http://www.foodnavigator.com/Market-Trends/What-do-natural-and-clean-label-mean-anyway
8. http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Ingredients/Clean-label-growth
9. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/food/2010/08/are-e-numbers-really-bad-for-y.shtml
10. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/21/a-feast-of-engineering-whats-really-in-your-food
11. http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/leaky-gut-syndrome/Pages/Introduction.aspx
References
David Taylor is a food microbiologist and the Senior Scientist atthe NoWFOOD Research Centre at the University of Chester.Prior to this he spent 20 years working for various LocalAuthority Environmental Health departments as both a foodexaminer and an Environmental Health Inspector enforcingfood safety and food standards law. He is a chartered biologistand recently completed the Post Graduate Diploma in Legal
Practice at the College of Law. He is currently reading for a PhD in food law.
About the Author
‘Clean label’ denotes a ‘natural’ product which has minimal or no processing
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