Should a sweetener brand be allowed to emboss its jars with strawberries? Or a flavoured tea adorn its packs with a picture of apples and berries? Perhaps, if the products contained any of these ingredients. But what if they didn’t?
In that case, they would be “fooling customers”, according to the European Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Association (Freshfel). In fact, the products could even be in breach of European regulations. Most worryingly perhaps, they could be cannibalising sales of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Keen to highlight this issue, Freshfel commissioned an Irish marketing consultancy to analyse a range of food products that use an image or word to reference fruit on their packaging. The results were published in December.
While Freshfel had suspicions that some manufacturers were selling fruitless products emblazoned with fruit, the level of non-compliance “shocked us”, says food policy advisor Raquel Izquierdo de Santiago. Almost one in five of the 207 products tested (18 per cent) was found to contain no fruit. A further 32 per cent had minimal fruit content (less than 10 per cent). Baked goods, milk and custard, sports drinks, flavoured water and fruit teas were the ‘infamous five’ - the categories with the highest number of products with no fruit ingredients.
But this isn’t the first report of its type. Just a couple of months before Freshfel released its study, Which? published one on juice drinks. Like Freshfel, it had become concerned that the marketing men were pushing the limits of regulation. There is industry guidance and there is regulation; the trouble is that while the guidance can be clear, the law often is not. This gives marketers a number of loopholes to exploit, as Which? found.
“Would you be happy to discover, as we did, that a commonly available juice drink with ‘real fruit’ contains more sugar than fruit juice concentrate?” the report read. “While [the marketers] know the difference between terms like ‘juice’ and ‘juice drink’ and ‘flavour’ and ‘flavoured’, they’re probably relying on the fact that you don’t.”
Indeed, the blend of woolly EU regulations, powerful brands with big advertising budgets and millions of health-conscious, time-pressed shoppers, has created the perfect conditions for the juice in the Which? report and the dozens of products Freshfel discovered to sell the idea of fresh fruit and vegetables without delivering the nutritional benefits.
Freshfel says the products should be removed from the shelves, or reformulated to “significantly increase their fruit and vegetable content”, given that they not only mislead consumers but also fall foul of new provisions under EU regulation 1924/2006. This covers nutrition and health claims made on all foods marketed within the European Union.
Freshfel says the use of pictorial, graphic or symbolic representations of any form, which states, suggests or implies that a food has particular characteristics is now “indisputably included in the definition of what constitutes a ‘claim’”. Others, however, are not so sure. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) guidance notes, for instance, suggest that while pictorial representations of fruit and vegetables are classed as ‘claims’, they might not be recognised as ‘nutrition claims’ or ‘health claims’ as defined in the regulation. It would thus be a matter of judgement as to whether an implied claim was being made.
However, the products in question could instead fall foul of the Food Safety Act requirement that a food should not mislead as to the quality, nature or substance, says Sue Davies, Which? chief policy adviser. “That’s the more general issue of misleading [a customer by] suggesting a product contains more fruit than it does. It would be up to trading standards to decide what was misleading or not.”
Those in the fresh produce industry are certainly supportive of clearer legislation that is fairer on the industry and the consumer. However, consumers are more discerning nowadays so trying to deceive them can be an own goal anyway, says Paul Lindley, founder of Ella’s Kitchen. The children’s food brand has just celebrated its fifth birthday by serving up its 70 millionth portion of fruit and veg. Lindley says he gets frustrated by the amount of products on the market with high water content - “mums want to pay for food, not water” - and the strange 5 A DAY rules.
According to the government, one portion of fruit and veg for an adult is 80g, but there is no definition for children, which means Lindley’s products can’t use the 5 A DAY logo despite being 90g in weight and containing nothing more than puréed fruit and veg. “I like the scheme, it works well, but we can’t use it,” he says.
Another company that was set up with the health agenda at its core has also been questioning the 5 A DAY initiative. Innocent, the company best-known for its smoothies, has just published an ‘orange paper’ that includes a recommendation for government to include composite foods such as soups and ready made meals in the scheme.
Innocent smoothies can currently carry the logo, but its Veg Pots can’t given that they contain ingredients other than fruit and veg. The brand’s nutritionist, Vanessa Hattersley, says the government has been “slow on the uptake” given that shoppers are looking for convenient ways to get their 5 A DAY. “If you made a vegetable lasagna from scratch, it could count as two of your 5 A DAY, yet a company using those same ingredients for its [ready prepared] lasagne can’t put that on its pack,” she explains. “According to the FSA, people get half a portion of their 5 A DAY from composite foods, but perhaps that could be more if there was more information on pack.”
It could also create demand for more fresh fruit and veg among food manufacturers, says Hattersley, with companies adding more fresh produce to ensure they had enough to meet the required amounts for using the logo. Indeed, of the products Freshfel analysed, only 17 per cent contained more than
50 per cent fruit. The IGD is actually looking at the possibility of best practice guidelines for composite foods to get the process underway.
Whether this helps or hinders the fresh produce sector remains to be seen. However, there is a theory that the sector’s energy would be better spent on promoting its own virtues rather than questioning those of its convenience cousins.
“I’d encourage fairer labelling, but the key for me is that we do more to promote our sector,” says Nigel Jenney, chief executive of the Fresh Produce Consortium. “It’s about how we increase the size of our market. What tends to happen at the moment is we have a lot of great campaigns but many cannibalise other products in our sector rather than products from the convenience sector.”
Jenney feels concepts like Eat in Colour, a campaign fronted by the FPC, can really help drive sales and expand the market as a whole. Marketing experts also suggest that more collaboration and innovation is required, especially given that fresh produce often doesn’t have the benefit of a ‘virtual billboard’ in the form of packaging upon which to communicate its health claims.
“More communications ingenuity is undoubtedly required by the fresh produce sector, but there is the quid pro quo that consumers are far more likely to be receptive and believing of the message to be shared,” explains Kate Waddell, MD of consumer brands at brand consultancy Dragon Rouge.
“There is much logic in the sector coming together in the face of the great pretender healthy brands - especially those [pretenders] that use real fruit imagery when there is none within. Finding the next ‘one of your 5 A DAY’ would be a great move. How about, ‘on your way to 8 A DAY’?,” she adds in reference to new research from Oxford University suggesting the current recommendations could be increased.
How many cups of flavoured tea would that take, one wonders?
No comments yet