09 May 2012 Organic Trend: The Clean Food Manifesto
The fact that today’s consumers are seeking more specific information on the foods and beverages they buy is a natural evolution of their interest in, and adoption of, organic and natural food products.
While organic has become a constant in consumers’ lives, consumers now look beyond trying to make distinctions between organic and natural, and look for cues which include natural, whole, real and the authentic story behind the food.
Consumer interest in organic and natural food products, however, extends beyond making mere distinctions between organic and natural and includes notions of “clean foods” — those foods that distance themselves from factory farming techniques and are often viewed as coming from known origins.
This is why restaurants like Chipotle [in the US] are currently seen as champions of the emerging clean foods trend. From the consumer perspective, clean encompasses a wide variety of attributes that communicate quality to consumers, including those terms which cue to narratives about farming, production, processing and ingredients.
While both organic and natural are seen as complementary attributes by consumers, their meaning continues to become more and more diluted over time.
Specifically, “organic” is understood as pertaining to what happens to food at its origin (eg, the farm, the plant, the animal). Conceptually, consumers think of organic as making a product “more natural.” As organic has moved deeper into the mainstream, it has lost some meaning for consumers, making additional attributes increasingly necessary.
The consumer understanding of “natural” is an ideal of what happens to the food after it is grown (eg, reducing the processing steps). Skepticism, however, around natural as a marketing term is prevalent among consumers, who see little, if any, meaning in it. This may encourage some to investigate the product more, but it is not enough by itself.
When products labeled natural and/or organic are clearly not healthy (eg, high in fat, sugar or sodium and low in nutrients), consumer skepticism grows.
Consumers are continually redefining quality. Within this redefinition, to consumers clean has both symbolic associations (fresh, safe, local, healthy) and objective associations (less processed, no chemicals, nothing artificial). Importantly, “clean” extends beyond organic and natural to represent a constellation of attributes that are not necessarily meant to be used in marketing messages…..