The European Commission (EC) is drawing up guidance to help clear up the confusion surrounding the labelling of ‘natural’ food colours.
The document, which is still in draft form, has been drawn up in response to confusion over the difference between colouring foodstuffs and natural colours.
This is an important distinction for food manufacturers as colouring foodstuffs are classed as food ingredients and hence not assigned E-numbers, while natural colours are classed as additives and assigned E-numbers because they have been ‘selectively extracted’ from their natural sources.
The interpretation of the phrase ‘selective extraction’ is therefore highly controversial, accepted Olga Solomon from the office of the director general for health and consumer protection at the EC.
Solomon, who was speaking at the Innovations in Food Colours conference in London last week, said: “This guidance is designed to be a working tool with flowcharts and decision trees so companies can go through their processes and work out whether the colour is a colouring foodstuff or not.”
However, speakers and delegates at the conference said a clear definition of natural colours would be more helpful: “If you can define natural flavours in law, why can’t you define natural colours?” asked Bruce Henry, technical director of Phytone and president of Natcol, the Natural Food Colours Association. “We should try and reach a consensus over this in Europe.”
One colours supplier at the event said: “Manufacturers will go to three different [colours] suppliers for a definition and get three different answers. They then pick the one they like the best.”
Another added: “The retailers also have different definitions. Some people argue that only colouring foodstuffs are natural, some say that anything derived from a natural source is natural and some say that even nature-identical colours (synthetic copies of colours that occur naturally) are also natural.”
Consumers, meanwhile, were baffled as ‘natural’ colours still had E-numbers, and many shoppers equated ‘E’ with artificial, he added.
The recent furore over Müller’s ‘all natural ingredients’ claim on its Little Stars range highlighted what a minefield ‘natural’ was in legal terms, added Joy Hardinge, chair of the Food and Drink Federation’s ingredients group. “The lack of a definition is not helping anybody.”
Carla Lee, a development technologist at Westmill Foods, said the insistence on removing artificial colours continued to cause technical challenges, although products were improving all the time “Natural colours are all very well but you are paying 20% or more extra for a third of the shelf-life, whereas synthetic colours are bulletproof, and given the choice, I’d choose synthetic every time. But consumers don’t realise that you don’t get the same performance, even if they do accept that you won’t always get the same colour match. On naturals, the problem is that the horse has already bolted and we’re galloping behind to keep up.”