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Mintel attributes this to a change in consumers’ ideals for healthy eating.  ‘Minus claims’, such as ‘low-fat’ or ‘low-calorie’ appear to be falling out of favour, as are ‘plus claims’ relating to, say, added vitamins or minerals.  Consumers are instead increasingly attracted to products that are perceived to be wholesome and pure. 

Like promoting your product’s ‘green’ credentials, tapping into these healthy ideals is a powerful marketing tool.  But how far can you go with claims that your food or beverage is ‘natural’?

What is ‘natural’?

Clearly, any claims you make about your product must be true.  This is straightforward when a quality can be objectively assessed, or measured against defined standards.  But what makes a food or beverage ‘natural’?

New Zealand law does not specifically regulate the use of the term ‘natural’.  We therefore need to look at the Fair Trading Act, and industry codes and guidelines for the answer.

The Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code doesn’t prescribe when ‘natural’ can be used.  However, the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) guidelines on representations about food state that:

‘Foods, or ingredients of foods, submitted to processes that have significantly altered their original physical, chemical or biological state should not be described as “natural”.  A “natural” food, or ingredient of a food, is not expected to contain, or to ever have contained, an added vitamin, mineral nutrient, artificial flavouring agent or synthetic food additive.  A natural food, or ingredient of a food, is also one that does not have any constituent or fraction thereof removed or significantly changed.’

To comply with the Fair Trading Act, product labeling and promotion must not be misleading or deceptive.  Previously the Commerce Commission had a guideline on food labelling, promotion, and marketing which dealt with the use of ‘natural’. This guideline has now been superseded, but it is almost identical to (and was presumably the model for) the NZFSA guideline discussed above.  The NZFSA guideline is therefore a useful indicator of the Commerce Commission’s approach to the use of ‘natural’.

It is also worth noting that draft Commerce Commission guidelines on labelling of genetically modified foods are proposing that it may be misleading to promote and label GM foods as ‘natural’, although some GM foods may comply with the NZFSA guideline.

You also need to keep in mind the Advertising Standards Authority’s Code for Advertising of Food, which requires compliance with the Fair Trading Act and specifically states that advertisements should not be misleading or deceptive.

Under New Zealand law, then, it appears that if you want to describe your food or beverage product as ‘natural’ it can’t be fortified with any vitamins or minerals, or have anything artificial added to it.  If you want to add, for example, a vitamin from a natural source to a product, a safer claim for that product is ‘contains natural ingredients’.

When it all goes wrong

In 2006, Cadbury Schweppes reformulated its 7UP product to contain what it described as ‘100% natural ingredients’: filtered carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, natural citric acid, natural flavours, and natural potassium citrate.  There was an accompanying advertising campaign showing cans of 7UP being picked from fruit trees, with the tagline ‘we stripped out all the artificial stuff’.

Cadbury Schweppes was promptly threatened with litigation by United States consumer advocacy group, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).  High fructose corn syrup, unlike table sugar which is produced from sugar cane or sugar beets, is manufactured by an industrial chemical process during which its chemical bonds are broken and rearranged.  CSPI took the position that high fructose corn syrup, regardless of its original plant source, is not ‘natural’ and that calling the 7UP product ‘natural’ was misleading.  While not conceding that its labelling was misleading or deceptive, Cadbury Schweppes re-labelled its product.

Like New Zealand, the United States does not have a legal definition for ‘natural’ except where the term is applied to meat or poultry. Sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s what you do.

Ultimately, it is your customers’ perception that is important.  Your customers are not interested in technical arguments over whether a highly processed ingredient can be called ‘natural’ because it was once a plant.  

You need to think about the expectation you are creating with your branding, labelling, and advertising, and make sure that your product lives up to that expectation.

Some guidelines

• If in doubt, avoid the ‘natural’ claim. Acceptable alternatives may be ‘contains natural ingredients’ or ‘nothing artificial added’.
• Whether or not a ‘natural’ claim (or any other product claim) is acceptable should be assessed in the overall context of your branding and promotion.
• Be careful not to suggest that because your product is ‘natural’ it is somehow healthier or more effective than comparable products, if this is not in fact the case.
  

An edited version of this Article was in FMCG, March 2009.