OPINION
By Steven Pace – Colours of Life – natural food colour specialists
I think food manufacturers should carefully consider before they try to go ‘natural’ that there are a lot of consumers who like the concept of natural. However if the ‘natural’ ingredients they choose aren’t good or wholesome, or cause problems, they could later face a consumer backlash. Of course there is then the question of whether it is worth the extra money.
I think it is good if you can produce things naturally; have recipes that have natural ingredients. However just artificially adding things to have a natural label is somewhat questionable in my mind. I think the natural ingredients you pick should be things you would want to eat yourself. Best of all, if you can put ingredients in which have known medicinal properties, there is a growing trend of nutraceuticals. If possible, go for ingredients which are phytonutrients, prebiotic, and antioxidants etc.
I’m impressed by their exclusive agreement with TyraTech to produce functional food products to benefit people living in areas with endemic parasitic disease. TyraTech claim to be able to produce products that use natural plant derived compounds targeting these chemoreceptors. Initiatives aimed at enhancing the health of improving the health of the billions of people worldwide with intestinal parasitic infections is a laudable goal. I hope that Kraft can be transparent in its marketing claims.
Back in 2007 I recall they were on the other end of a lawsuit for marketing its Capri Sun fruit drink as “all natural” despite the presence of high-fructose corn syrup. Hopefully lawsuits such as these can cause companies such as Kraft to resist the temptation of labelling products as “all natural” just to portray products as healthier for consumers than they really are. Not even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is prepared to adopt a clear definition of a “natural” product or ingredient.
On the other hand he U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines a “natural” ingredient as not containing artificial or synthetic ingredients, and being minimally processed. The FDA’s current definition holds that products are able to be called “natural” as long as they don’t contain synthetic or artificial ingredients, and do not contain “unexpected ingredients”.
The fact that Kraft had to alter their product packaging of Capri Sun to read “no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives,” instead of “all natural” is the type of trust issues that remain in the minds of consumers. As Mike Adams explains when referring to the Honest Food Guide, we were intended to eat all the colours of the rainbow, the colours of life, from life, for life.
Red, orange, yellow, green, purple and white, and people should eat foods that are different colours, created by a vital nutrient or vital chemical created by the plant that produced these foods. Being potent antioxidants they have specific biological advantages that are critical to human health. These colours are medicines. Blueberries, lycopene, lutein are all medicines. The artificial colours are derived from coal based petrochemicals.
If you modify those petrochemicals enough, you can create food colours. That’s where they come from. The FDA still permits certain food colourings because there is not enough data to suggest that people have died or suffered adverse reactions from them to withdraw them from the market. The colours of the rainbow, from nature’s palette, although imperfect in food colouring, are all colours of fruits and vegetables we’re familiar with, carrots (beta-carotene) and tomatoes and gac fruit red. Foods with artificial colours are used to seduce us to consume them as food is a highly sensory experience.
Cultures that have the healthiest diets make beneficial use of colours in their foods. Mediterranean diets tomato paste using lycopene, cooked increasing its bioavailability. They go to great lengths to put different colours in them. I sell colours that use it uses colours from nature, medicinal colours that add to visual appeal of food. Kraft Foods is owned by Phillip Morris, and has thousands of food scientists at their disposal. They are playing with molecules of food to make consumers make purchasing decisions which involve choosing their products.