History of Clean Label at CuliNEX
When it comes to Clean Label food product formulation, no company has more experience than CuliNEX. For twenty years, our team has delivered Clean Label solutions that succeed in meeting our clients’ goals and claiming consumers’ hearts.
Clients reach out to CuliNEX with an understanding that Clean Label is important to their formulations. “We are the leading authority on clean label development in the United States,” said Mark Crowell, CEO of CuliNEX.
But what exactly does Clean Label mean at CuliNEX?
CuliNEX Clean Label Origins
Twenty years ago in the food industry, transparency was not widely practiced, and health was not commonly prioritized. Mark Crowell, however, believed the industry, and the public, were headed in that direction. In 2005, he founded CuliNEX to provide organic and natural product development services for the food industry. His vision was not simply to follow a trend. “I wanted to do the right thing for the people and for the planet,” Crowell said.
Natural and Organic
Back in 2005, the company used the term “natural and organic” to describe its product development philosophy. At the time, growing evidence linked diet to health problems like obesity and diabetes. People were making choices based on what was inside the products they consumed. More and more shoppers were reading food labels.
Two decades ago, however, food labels were hard to understand. Food product packaging rarely contained statements about where a food came from. Complex chemical names made it hard to understand what the food products were made of.
Crowell saw an opportunity and a real need to impact the kind of food products being developed.
Clean Label Revolution
Today CuliNEX uses the term Clean Label as an umbrella term to describe its approach to product development. Natural and organic are still pillars of the CuliNEX practice, but over the years, the phrasing has morphed among both the industry and the public.
Terminology began to shift from “natural” to Clean Label around 2011. That year, European Food Information Regulation 1169 mandated clear and accurate labeling of all food products in the EU.
In the United States, we also experienced an upswell in the desire to see more information and more transparency on food labels, so CuliNEX adopted the term Clean Label as a broader term to replace “organic and natural.” The new term was expansive enough to include other beneficial qualities that CuliNEX delivers to its clients, such as transparency in labeling and simplicity of ingredients.
Clean Label Today
Today, Clean Label refers to transparency in labeling, simplicity of natural ingredients, as well as products with no artificial additives, preservatives, or colorants. Clean Label products exclude many ingredients, often with complex, unrecognizable chemical names. Ingredient traceability and non-GMO status are newer product attributes covered under the clean label umbrella.
For CuliNEX, the term also means honesty in the marketing promises that products make. “We try to dissuade our clients from misleading marketing claims by formulating products that meet their clean label objectives,” said Crowell.
The term Clean Label is not static and will continue to morph as consumers demand new attributes from the foods they consume. The meaning of many words change over time. “There is no legal definition to Clean Label,” said Crowell, “just as there's no legal definition to ‘natural.’”
No matter how you define it, the fundamental underlying principle of simple, natural ingredients and transparency underlies the promise of every Clean Label product developed at CuliNEX.
