Once a year, scientists, policy makers and food manufacturers gather at the Institute of Food Technologists' annual conference to discuss innovations driving the future of food.
While the topics that dominated the show floor and panel sessions at the conference were largely unchanged from last year’s event, it’s clear that conversations around established trends are beginning to shift — with individuals from across the food industry questioning the benefits of some of these changes.
Here are three questions that IFT18 attendees wrestled with throughout the conference last week:
1. Are clean labels helping or hurting consumers?
For the past few years, growing consumer fear about artificial ingredients and suspicion of Big Food formulations have sent manufacturers racing to “clean” up their product labels. The buzzword’s ubiquity was evident on the IFT18 show floor where ingredient suppliers and food manufacturers proudly displayed that they are clean label compliant.
Even though the industry has traditionally viewed the efforts of upstarts and legacy brands to phase out artificial colors, flavors and preservatives as positive progress, some panelists worried about the impact the trend could have on consumer health.
“Companies have treated clean labeling programs as first and foremost marketing programs rather than tools to [improve] public health,” Laura MacCleery, policy director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said at a panel at the conference. “There’s health-washing going on in products that are essentially no better for you nutritionally.”
Speakers pointed to the rise of “clean label” junk food as evidence of this industry tactic. MacCleery highlighted the fact that aside from substitutions for certain additives, “clean” products such as PepsiCo’s Simply Cheetos are no different from their original versions.
"Companies have treated clean labeling programs as first and foremost marketing programs rather than [tools] to improve public health."
Laura MacCleery
Policy director, Center for Science in the Public Interest
“Our objection is not around taking calories or salt out of indulgent foods — that’s a good reformulation,” she said. “What we do object to is the veggie sticks that are basically potato chips with a dusting of beets and spinach that are marketed as healthy food… People may overconsume those because they’ve given themselves permission to eat more of those things.”
Mehmood Khan, PepsiCo's chief scientific officer, assented that just because something is clean label doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s healthy. Still, he said the movement has been positive because it gives consumers the chance to make better eating decisions.
“I think we have to be a little careful. … We have to learn to listen to the consumer, not talk to the consumer. Let’s not tell them what’s good for them — they don’t like that,” he said.
But MacCleery disagreed. She said because there is no official definition of clean label, manufacturers are simply responding to consumer whims without taking health into account. This can lead to an overcorrection when they decide to make changes to their ingredients list. A CSPI audit found many manufacturers were eliminating ingredients that were nutritionally beneficial simply because they had “technical” sounding names that shoppers learned to distrust.
Even though panelists were split on whether or not the trend is problematic, they all agreed that consumer understanding of what clean labels indicate could be improved. But the question remains how to do that?
John O’Brien, former CEO of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, suggested schools bridge this education gap with food-focused classes similar to home economics courses. Food historian Nadia Bernstein said manufacturers should work to dismantle the perceived dichotomy between food and technology and demystify operations in order to ease consumer fears. For her part, MacCleery called for the creation of a standard clean label definition, as well as an industry agreement of what marketing tactics are appropriate.
2. Who decides what is healthy?
Similar to clean label, the term “healthy” has no legal definition — an issue that’s been a headache for food manufacturers and regulators alike. Last September, the Food and Drug Administration began accepting comments on how best to define the term, but when and if the agency will act remains unclear.
In the meantime, manufacturers and consumers have developed their own definitions of the word. It may not be a surprise to find that their views don’t always align.
Khan said in order to foster trust between consumers and food companies, brands should embrace transparency on product packaging, company websites and social media channels to let shoppers make informed decisions about what they are buying.
“At the end of the day, the consumer who is making the decision about what they want to purchase is making the decision about what they think is healthy,” he said. “We’re having to learn to communicate. This whole transparency thing is part of open communication.”
When panel moderator Tamar Haspel, a Washington Post food columnist, asked Khan what happens when the consumer gets it wrong. He argued it’s not the responsibility of the manufacturer to tell consumers what to eat.
But is simply giving consumers greater access to information that can inform nutritional decisions, either through product branding, blockchain or QR codes like SmartLabel, enough? O’Brien thinks it is.
“I think as an industry … we’d love to do a better job explaining what we do, why we do it and why it’s good,” he said. “It’s not about information because information can confuse … it’s about transparency … and not necessarily pushing information, but to at least enable people to be able to see it.”
"At the end of the day, the consumer who is making the decision about what they want to purchase is making the decision about what they think is healthy."
Mehmood Khan
Chief Scientific Officer, PepsiCo
Mehmood added that in some cases, this show-don’t-tell strategy is the only way to get consumers to accept a healthier version of the products they enjoy.
He explained that when PepsiCo took trans fats and saturated fats out of Lay’s potato chips and added a sunflower symbol to the package to indicate that it was healthier, consumers stopped buying it, assuming the taste would be impacted. When the company removed the sunflower logo, sales bounced back.
“Today, a single-serve bag of Lay’s potato chips has less salt than a slice of white bread,” he said. “Having brought the consumer along in that journey without actually communicating it, they came along with us. There’s a lesson here … you have to be very careful in how you bring your consumer along and still do the right thing.”
Bernstein, the historian, argued that reason this cloak-and-dagger approach to making foods healthier exists is because consumers don’t trust Big Food companies to value their health.
“I think that … declining trust in institutions and experts and professionals across [the food industry] has to do with the inscrutability of food production, food processing and food technology to most people,” she said. “So, I have some hesitation when [people] propose more information on packaging as the solution to get consumers to make better choices. ... There needs to be education.”
While panelists varied on the degree to which food companies are responsible for improving public health, they were in agreement that the key to making meaningful change and improving consumer understanding of what is healthy can be done by reframing Big Food as part of future solutions — not just current problems.
3. What should lab-grown meat be called?
The environmental and nutritional benefits of lab-grown meat were the subject of several panels at IFT18, with Silicon Valley startup leaders and nongovernmental organizations praising the category's potential to disrupt and improve traditional animal agriculture.
What was unclear, however, is what these cell-cultured products should be called.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Cattlemen's Association petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to bar lab-grown beef from the term "meat," citing the fact that traditional meat producers have to pay into checkoff programs used for promotion. But given the dairy industry's failed attempts to strip plant-based dairy alternatives of the term "milk," panelists said it was unlikely this budding protein category would be called anything but meat.
Panelists agreed the innovation should be categorized as part of the meat segment. Still, speakers differed on what descriptors — such as lab-grown, cellular, cell-cultured and clean — would best define the scientific innovation.
The Good Food Institute, a U.S. nonprofit that promotes plant-based meat, dairy and egg substitutes, as well as cell-cultured meat, argued the category should be referred to as "clean meat" to highlight the product's superior food safety and environmental impact. Peter Verstrate, the CEO of Mosa Meat, and David Bowman, co-founder of cell-cultured meat company Mission Barns, concurred.
But some in the industry said the terminology takes an unnecessary jab at conventional animal agriculture and could lead consumers to believe that traditionally produced meat, poultry and seafood are inherently inferior to lab-grown alternatives.
“One of the problems that's brought us [to] where we are today is we've been, for decades, demonizing things. We've demonized the old habits and we champion the new ones, and in the future we'll demonize those as well," O'Brien said. "The word ‘clean meat’ is a key example — making out that conventional meat from animals is somehow inferior to what’s coming in the future.”
Still, the category's bigger concern is how its eventual name will impact its regulation, and as a result, its path to commercialization.
Stuart Pape, chair of FDA practices at law firm Polsinelli, said despite the fact the agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are sparring for jurisdiction over this nascent industry, it's possible that the two entities could end up working together to develop nomenclature for cellular agriculture products — though only one will oversee the segment.
“I think the legal and regulatory issues are the ones that determine whether this technology is commercially successful or not,” he said.