(Published in Soft Drinks International May 2010)
From 1 January 2011 new legislation affecting flavourings comes into force across the European Union. This will impact on soft drinks producers as well as food producers more generally. After the current transition phase, from present to new legislation, what will be the legal requirements upon manufacturers? Barry Welch, Technical Manager for Kerry Ingredients & Flavours, explains.
The soft drinks market in the European Union is currently valued at €126.7bn*, and is forecast to increase by 10% by 2014, even taking into consideration the current economic conditions.
Within the EU, sugar reduction in soft drinks is high on the agenda, particularly in northern Europe, but this is also beginning to emerge as a trend in southern Europe. The trend towards natural flavours is also continuing.
This natural flavours trend in the soft drinks market means that the new flavour Regulation is particularly relevant as it introduces some important changes.
Regulation (EC) No 1334/2008 essentially aims to harmonise the use of food flavourings, and ingredients with flavouring properties, ‘in and on foods’. The Regulation will lead to an EU ‘positive list’ of flavouring substances that can be used in flavourings, and set conditions for their use and the labelling rules that will apply. It will also specify what processes are permitted in the manufacture of natural flavouring substances and flavouring preparations.
When is ‘natural’ natural?
One big challenge thrown up for food manufacturers is that the word ‘natural’ will only be used for substances or preparations which are derived from material of vegetable, animal or microbiological origin. They will need to provide more detailed ingredient declarations, and depending upon the origin and composition of the natural flavouring, one of several declarations could apply. Taking lemon as an example, these could be: Natural Flavouring Substances, Natural Flavouring, Natural Lemon Flavouring with Other Natural Flavourings or Natural Lemon Flavouring.
Flavours will be classified differently under the new regulation, so what classifications will apply under the new legislation, how are they different, and what do they replace?
What are the categories established by the new Regulation?
The Regulation establishes six categories of ‘flavourings’: Flavouring Substances; Flavouring Preparations; Thermal Process Flavourings, Smoke Flavourings Flavour Precursors and Other Flavourings.
Under the old Directive, Flavouring Substances were subdivided into Natural Flavouring Substances, Nature Identical Flavouring Substances and Artificial Flavouring Substances. Under the new Regulation Flavouring Substances are now either just Flavouring Substances or if applicable Natural Flavouring Substances. The old categories of Nature Identical and Artificial Flavouring substances have now being redefined as Flavouring Substances.
The Regulation clarifies further that “Natural flavouring substances correspond to substances that are naturally present and have been identified in nature”. Additionally, only items in this category are permitted for use in preparing a flavouring that may be called natural.
The Flavouring Preparations category existed under the old Directive, but under the new Regulation it is specified more precisely. It relates to products that are not flavouring substances, but which are obtained from food, or from non-food materials of animal, vegetable or microbiological origin, according to clearly defined processes.
Thermal Process Flavourings cover products that are obtained after heat treatment from a mixture of ingredients which do not necessarily have flavouring properties themselves. This category existed under the old Directive as Process Flavourings.
Smoke Flavourings, category that existed under the old Directive, is separately controlled under Regulation (EC) No 2065/2003. It applies to products obtained by the fractionation and purification of a condensed smoke.
New categories and fresh implications
Flavour Precursors is a new category not present in the old Directive. It encompasses products that do not necessarily have flavour themselves, but which are added to food with the sole intention of producing flavours by breaking down or reacting with other components during processing of food.
An example of such a precursor Flavouring could be a blend of sugars and amino acids, which in itself has little flavour, but when used in a canning application reacts in the can on processing to generate flavour.
Other Flavourings is another new category, used when a flavouring does not fit any of the five previous definitions.
The new Regulation also sets maximum levels of certain substances naturally present in certain flavourings and food ingredients with flavouring properties. The old Directive controlled the presence of these naturally occurring biologically active substances in flavours, whereas the new Regulation also controls their presence in actual food ingredients.
So what impact will these changes have upon ingredients lists and formulations… and what effect will they have upon flavour houses and manufacturers?
Probably the main implication of the new Regulation is the way it has changed use of the term ‘natural.’ Under the old Directive, to declare ‘Natural Raspberry Flavouring’, 90% by weight of the flavouring portion needed to be derived from the raspberry fruit itself. This proportion rises to 95% by weight under the new Regulation. Additional flavouring material from the named source will need to be added, and formulations amended, to retain this declaration.
However, if a flavouring has less than 95% from the named source, for example 94% derived from mint and 6% derived from orange, then it would need to be declared as ‘Natural Mint Flavouring With Other Natural Flavouring’ – or just ‘Flavouring’.
Under the old Directive, either of these examples could have been designated as ‘Natural Flavourings’. Under the new Regulation they must be identified either as ‘Flavourings’ – lacking the valuable ‘natural’ qualifier – or with the longer designations shown above, which may be confusing for some consumers.
Even more confusingly, manufacturers are only allowed to declare ‘Natural Flavouring’ on a label when the components used do not reflect the overall flavour profile of the flavour. For example this would include a flavouring with the overall flavour profile of a banana, but 100% derived from other sources such as strawberry and raspberry.
Reformulation: the holistic approach
A key reason for initiating these changes was to give consumers a greater insight into the contents of food products that they buy. However in many cases, what’s actually happening is that food manufacturers are requesting reformulation to avoid needing to use the longer declaration. The challenge for flavour houses is that such reformulation requires not simply adjustments to a single ingredient, but also to the overall product formulation, against tight time and cost constraints. This holistic approach is the one we are taking with our customers at Kerry Ingredients & Flavours. We have found that by tailoring all ingredients and flavours in-house, including sensory evaluation, we can help our customers bring consumer-preferred products to market more quickly and cost-effectively that would be possible using traditional approaches.
So, given all these changes, does the new Regulation make it clearer to consumers what is meant by ‘natural’ flavours?
Well, what we can say is that today’s consumers are clearly more aware of food ingredients, what they are and where they originate, and it is important that food manufacturers recognise this. There is an increasing perception that ambiguous labels such as ‘nature identical’ could hide artificial ingredients that some people might prefer to avoid.
If this is the case, a good thing about the Regulation is that it requires manufacturers to be much more precise about the type and origin of their flavour ingredients. However, our concern at Kerry is that by pursuing greater precision, the Regulation has sacrificed clarity.
For example, how will ordinary consumers tell the difference between Natural Lemon Flavouring and Natural Lemon Flavouring with Other Natural Flavourings? Perhaps permitting a less strict use of the term ‘natural flavouring’ might have been a good idea.
Conclusion
It’s vital to build and maintain consumers’ trust in the latest flavour technologies and ingredients, which are subject to rigorous safety testing, and are essential to healthier-lifestyle formulation approaches involving salt, sugar and fat reduction.
Our work with customers has shown the crucial importance of optimised flavour in successful ‘healthier’ reformulations. We’ve seen at first hand the value added for customers by clean-label flavour ingredients deployed as part of an overall ingredients, technologies and application expertise portfolio.
The new flavours regime could result in a significant amount of reformulation activity in the soft drinks market, as well as the wider food industry. With Kerry's broad range of technologies and extensive capability in applications, we have the resources and expertise to assist manufacturers in providing the necessary solutions to their reformulation challenges.
*Figures from Euromonitor
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