Clean Label Movement Is Forcing Food Companies to Reassess Shelf Life

Fermentation is also becoming more popular for developing clean label preservatives. Cultured vegetables are widely used in cured meats: “A lot of vegetables have naturally occurring nitrate. During fermentation, it loses one atom of oxygen and converts to nitrite, which can replace sodium nitrite,” says Dr. Glass. Other fermentable options with antimicrobial properties are sugar, wheat, and dairy. “Through fermentation, it’s possible to obtain the same types of organic acids as the synthetic ones used to control Listeria, Clostridium, or molds in dairy or bakery products.”

A category apart is clean label plant-based meat. Here, says Quartel, shelf-life issues are more related to spoilage organisms than to oxidation. However, she adds, “We come across off flavors throughout their shelf life. It probably has to do with protein degradation, although that’s still an active area of research.”

“Plant-based and animal proteins have different microbiomes,” says Dr. Glass. “The basics of microbial control, such as water content or acidity level, will be the same, but some microbes in plant-based clean label meat may be more tolerant to the usual formulation strategies used for animal protein.”

Beyond Formulation

Working on formulations is not the only way to ensure the shelf life of clean label products. There are other factors food manufacturers can consider. One of them is packaging. “For products with a long shelf life, using heat treatment with a specifically designed package is an excellent way to keep the product safe without preservatives,” says Josefine Wegelid, a food technologist at Tetra Pak, a food packaging and processing company.

When heat treatment is too aggressive, however, it could be perceived as a way to produce “ultraprocessed” food, which is something clean label proponents tend to avoid. “Traditional thermal processing or nonthermal methods like pulsed electric fields, cold plasma, electron-beam irradiation (EBI), or ultraviolet (UV) light may not always be accepted by consumers in clean label products,” says Sadhana Ravishankar, PhD, associate professor of animal and comparative biomedical sciences and nutritional sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “You may have to reduce the heat and combine it with natural antimicrobials or find alternative methods. One of them is high-pressure processing (HPP), which uses high pressure instead of heat and works really well with sauces, guacamole, jellies, and ready-to-eat meats. Ozone is another effective clean label processing technology, especially for water and fresh produce. It works better than chlorine against foodborne pathogens and leaves no residue,” says Dr. Ravishankar.

Beyond formulations, maintaining shelf life in clean label products has an impact at all levels of food production.

“Before reformulating a product, it’s very important to do a new risk assessment based on the new conditions to understand what microorganisms can grow,” says Ulrika Brintje, a food technology specialist at Tetra Pak. This, in turn, will influence what critical points need to be controlled in the facility.”

“Clean label reformulations cost more and require time, not only to find the right concentration and flavor profile but also to test shelf life properly,” says Quartel. “We have customers that take as long as a full year to do a shelf-life study.”

Being Strategic about Reformulations

Clean label reformulations can be lengthy and costly, and an adequate shelf life is not always guaranteed. Wouldn’t it be better just to explain to consumers that a chemical is a chemical, whether it comes from a natural source or not, and that natural ingredients are not necessarily good for our health, while artificial ones are not necessarily bad?

Education may not be the best strategy right now: 77% of surveyed consumers are aware that some natural ingredients can be bad for their health, says Dave Lundahl, PhD, CEO of InsightsNow. The problem is that people today always don’t trust large food companies, he adds. “Just because an ingredient is GRAS or a marketer says it’s healthy, they will not [necessarily] believe it.”