Lean, clean machine

What does 'clean-label' mean? This, you might think, is a pretty straightforward question to ask the co-founder of a company specialising in the supply of clean-label ingredients. But frustratingly, there is no clear-cut answer.As with those fabled 'store cupboard ingredients' now favoured by many food retailers, there is no legal definition of what clean-label actually means, even though the term has become pretty ubiquitous, says Ulrick & Short director Adrian Short.

"It doesn't necessarily mean no E-numbers, for example. Cynics would argue that it's more about what some marketer in a major food retailer thinks shouldn't be on ingredients labels this week. It's also an evolving concept. Take xanthan gum [a natural gum polysaccharide produced by fermenting glucose or sucrose]. Some retailers are turning against this because it's not something consumers would recognise or have in their own kitchen cupboards. Oh. And it also starts with an x."

This, it emerges, combined with an unfortunate "chemical-sounding name" is the kiss of death for many an aspiring food ingredient.

In the world of food marketing, says Short, perception is everything. So 'cleaning up' your label could mean anything from removing/replacing anything that sounds like a chemical; shortening the overall list of ingredients as much as possible; avoiding words like 'hydrogenated', 'artificial', 'modified' or 'gum' to steering clear of any ingredient linked to any negative publicity, however unfair (aspartame, sodium benzoate).

But some 'nasties' have remained in products because they are so hard to replace, says Short. "Retailers have been forced to take a reality check as removing some additives has had detrimental impacts on quality and shelf-life."

Despite the perception that 'cleaning' up labels is being done in the interests of consumers, it actually has very little to do with health, nutrition or safety and everything to do with marketing, admits Short, who founded his Pontefract, UK-based firm with business partner Andrew Ulrick in 2000, just as the major UK retailers were jumping on the clean-label bandwagon.

"There is nothing wrong with modified starch, GM soya or aspartame. Starch that has been modified using chemicals in order to improve its functionality is a robust, economic and highly functional food ingredient. But if you are supplying the premium range of any UK supermarket these days, or indeed many major manufacturers, they don't want it on their labels. What we are doing is supplying the market with an alternative."

The clean-label revolution started back in the early 1990s, when retailers were looking to rid labels of GM soya to avoid 'Frankenfood' slurs, says Short. "We tied up with a German firm that could fractionate wheat protein, recombine it using a physical process and come up with a protein that would mimic the functionality of soya protein, but with a clean label, because we didn't hydrolyse it with acid."

Retailers don't want you to treat starches and proteins with chemicals to improve their functionality because this means you have to put 'modified' or 'hydrolysed' on the label. If you use a physical process to do exactly the same thing, you can avoid such nasty adjectives, he explains.

Consumers, apparently, want food that "sounds wholesome, friendly and home-made", with some even claiming to avoid 'processed' food altogether, although they are often unable to articulate what this means, admits Short. Indeed, unless they are foraging in the earth for their evening meals, one suspects they are probably having to make some compromises here or there, he suggests.

"Everything is driven by what something sounds like on the label." Indeed, there is even a hierarchy within clean-label. "Take clean-label maize starch, which UK food manufacturers are allowed to label 'cornflour'. Because this is something consumers have in their cupboards at home, it's very popular. We've actually got some terrific clean-label products based on tapioca that we think are far better, but because they must be labelled 'tapioca starch', they play second fiddle to 'cornflour'."

Many manufacturers, meanwhile, have been caught up in the middle of all this, says Short. One day they will be using modified starch at £600t and the next week their customers say you have to use a clean-label alternative, which costs twice as much.

For good or ill, however, clean-label is now moving into the mainstream, says Short. "When we started out, clean-label was a bit like organic. Not anymore. The UK is still our largest market, but we are getting more and more enquiries from Ireland, the Netherlands, Benelux and other markets."

Indeed, the prospects for Ulrick & Short, which supplies a range of clean-label fat replacers, stabilisers and thickeners, emulsifiers, texturisers and phosphate replacers from tapioca, waxy corn and wheat, have improved dramatically in recent years as a result, with turnover expected to soar from £4M to £8-10M in three years.

Perhaps the most interesting recent developments have been the launch of a clean-label tapioca extract called Ezimoist that enables manufacturers to remove phosphate from their labels in processed meats and sausages, and a fat replacer called Delyte enabling bakers to replace up to half the fat in baked goods without compromising taste and texture, says Short. "We're also running trials with other crops including sweet potato and arrowroot."

But increasingly, the firm is also looking to develop products with positive nutritional benefits, says Short, who is exploring a clean-label preservative ideal for soft drinks that could replace sodium benzoate (which has become tarnished through its association with the notorious Southampton University study on artificial colours) in soft drinks and baked goods.

Equally exciting is work on a new prebiotic dietary fibre derived from the agave plant that is claimed to have other digestive benefits over and above those of inulin from chicory root.

While most of its competitors dwarf Ulrick & Short in size, being a minnow in a sea of sharks is not always a bad thing, says Short, whose raw materials are produced by accredited partners all over the world. "A lot of it is about service. When we send people out into the field, they will roll up their sleeves, go into your factory and work with you on your production line to make our ingredients work in your business."

What will be interesting is to see whether attitudes to genetically modified foods will change, says Short. "I think they will have to as there are such shortages of food. You can already see the debate shifting. Technically, you could argue that GM should be clean-label, like organic."

But can retailers and manufacturers that have spent years making marketing capital out of their non-GM stance suddenly conduct a u-turn on this subject without being accused of the worst kind of hypocrisy and opportunism?

Short is in no doubt. "It's all in the marketing. We've seen the marketers kill off GM, well maybe they can welcome it back again. If farmers here could grow GM wheat, they would do it tomorrow."