30 January 2012 - E-number-free ingredients (Product News)

Both consumers and the retail industry are in need of products which have a (more) natural image. This can be realised by, for example, adding fewer E-numbers to food. A product free of E-numbers is sometimes also referred to as an E-number-free or clean label.

Explanation about E-numbers
E-numbers are ingredients for food approved by the European Union and are therefore amongst the safest ingredients. There are strict regulations in place regarding which ingredients and associated quantities may be used in food. There may be cases whereby larger quantities of the exact same substances are present in natural foods than is permitted in food containing E-numbers. For example, some types of cheese and cranberries naturally contain more preservatives than a food producer may add.

Natural and healthy image trend with consumers
Sonneveld already developed a complete range of clean label tin bread and rolls in 2008 in order to respond to the above trend, including fruited bread (rolls, currant buns, stollen, etc). This was made possible as Sonneveld was one of the first to use new enzyme technologies which could keep bread soft and fresh for longer and which could replace synthetic emulsifiers (E-numbers). A nice example is an enzyme which turns the fat in flour (flour naturally contains 2-3% fat) into a natural emulsifier. As a number of these fatty substances in the flour have a negative effect on the baking process, the enzyme can result in considerable volume, structure and softness improvements.

Sonplus Clean Label
Bread improvers containing ascorbic acid (Vitamin C, E300) and Cysteine (dough relaxation, E920) may be referred to as clean label in theNetherlands. After all, these E-numbers are converted during the kneading, rising and baking process and are subsequently hardly detectable. Sonplus Clean Label forms part of Sonneveld’s product assortment. This is a bread improver which is suitable for various different purposes. The product is based on enzyme technology and exclusively contains the ascorbic acid (E300) E-number, permitted for clean label.

There are various different European countries which prefer for their food producers not to use ascorbic acid or Cysteine in their clean label products either. Sonneveld therefore has natural ingredients available upon request for this purpose and for preservatives, which can also replace these E-numbers.

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