Clean labels are always attractive to consumers, for it is important to have food without additives and preservatives. This leads to companies leaning towards the trend of producing ‘clean’ food that without preservatives tends to rot away at a very fast rate.
Nowadays, healthy eating and living is an extremely trending topic, as we often hear news on various additives and preservatives turning out to cause various illnesses including cancer. A lot of experts indicate that there are a number of food additives that are dangerous to eat, many of them labeled with ‘E’.
Additives such as E330 (Citric Acid), are mistaken to cause cancer for example, but in fact the only danger they pose is for those who are allergic to sulfites. Food coloring additives are also considered as a possible source for cancer.
This global trending approach of avoiding artificial additives and preservatives leads to the question whether this new clean-label movement is beneficial or not. Health- wise it is surely a positive process, being able to buy clean label foods that we do not fear of having additives.
Sadly, clean labels has a negative side effect which many are unaware of. Clean label products that last for a limited amount of time due to the lack of preservatives which means they bring about a lot more waste in the given timeframe.
This means that clean label foods require a far better method to get rid of communal waste, but this is not really realized by those consumers who just throw away the happily bought clean products that rot away fast.
According to researches, in general, the European population for example, are not worried about the waste produced as long as they receive healthy clean label offers. This seems to be an example of the common human approach, that our ‘health’ is higher priority than Earth’s well-being.
On the other hand, are consumers really the ones to be blamed for wanting healthy clean label products? Or is it supposed to be the industries’ or governments’ duty to create a solution for the increasing amount of waste generated by clean labels?
Others also claim that the appearance of clean labels are not significantly affecting increase in waste, as there is no actual evidence for stores offering special sales for clean label products to result in more waste to be produced.
