Demand for clean label preservatives has increased over the last five to 10 years and it is the main focus of the food processing industry; the emphasis is how we can clean up these labels.
The natural food preservatives market was valued at $796.1 million in 2018 and is projected to top $1 billion by 2026, a compound annual growth rate of 3.7%, according to data from Allied Market Research.
Increasingly, all natural is a deciding factor for consumers when they contemplate what product to buy, a factor that has grown in importance during the ongoing pandemic. Consumers are definitely driving this. There’s a bit of a conflict, though, when consumers say they’re looking for ingredients that they recognise on labels versus what they’re willing to pay. That puts the onus back on the food manufacturer to see what applications they want to convert first, and what makes the most sense for them to convert.”
Natural preservatives are incorporated into a wide swath of products, including meat, candy, baked goods, and snacks, to preserve the natural characteristics of the offerings, prevent spoilage during shipping, and increase the overall shelf life. The demand for natural preservatives has only increased as consumers have turned to snacking more and upped their consumption of food on the go.
The most common go-tos in the better-for-you category include citric acid, which is derived from fruits like grapefruits and lemons; ascorbic acid, or vitamin C; vinegar; and rosemary extract. Vinegar, for example, is used to curtail the growth of bacteria and prevent spoilage. Rosemary extract is popular for delaying colour and flavour loss in products such as snack bars, cookies, chips, nuts, dressings and sauces that have significant fat content; and citric acid is regularly incorporated to make it difficult for mold or bacteria to survive.
Early versions of natural preservatives dating back thousands of years include salt and sugar. But with those natural food additives increasingly shunned by many people, it has put the focus on ingredient manufacturers to develop alternative better-for-you substitutes.
In many cases, it’s a difficult task riddled with challenges that can take researchers years to overcome. Natural preservatives sometimes require a larger amount to achieve the same effect as their synthetic counterparts.
The problem is upping the quantity used to achieve the same shelf life as synthetics can negatively impact the flavor, forcing ingredient makers to find workarounds. Flavor can be more easily masked in something like a spicy sausage when a potent natural preservative is added, but in frozen chicken nuggets that often command a shelf life of up to 18 months, changes in how it tastes are less forgiving.
Like rosemary extract, it is one of the potential natural preservatives, and it was discovered that blending green tea extract with its rosemary extract slowed down the oxidation process and the rancid flavours that it creates. The pairing of the ingredients not only boosts the antioxidant protection but reduces the amount of rosemary that’s needed in products such as sausages.
Another hurdle is not only discovering natural preservatives that do the intended function, but producing them in a large enough quantity and for an attractive price to convince a large CPG maker to include them in one or more of their mass-produced brands.
Another preservative found in nature, recently commercialized along with a partner, rosmarinic acid, is valued for its antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. The ingredient, which is an active component found in rosemary extract, is different from its parent in that it’s odourless and tasteless. The lack of these attributes is especially valuable when a beverage maker, for example, wants to create a strawberry drink but doesn’t want the distinctive taste of rosemary.
A challenge for rosmarinic acid in the past was that it was difficult to produce enough on a large scale, an obstacle that caused the price for it to surge and deterred some companies from using it. By creating more of the ingredient in a lab using natural processes, it has not only lowered the cost “but opened up many more applications for which it will become available.”
Meaningful strides in innovation during the last decade have expanded the availability of cleaner label, natural preservatives available to food and beverage manufacturers. But in some cases, like a value brand, it may never make economic sense to switch over to a more costly natural alternative if a manufacturer wants to maintain a specific price point.
In addition, there are segments of the food space where synthetics continue to reign, most notably in products like chips or candy bars where an individual isn’t turning to them to eat healthier in the first place.
“We know we’re eating something as an indulgence and people don’t tend to pay as close attention in those areas and therefore less industry change is reflected in that.”