Allergen Labelling: Eliminating allergens in your products to help boost sales!

Food Allergens 800 x 533

With at least 5% of consumers being Dairy Intolerant, you may be limiting your sales audience unnecessarily.

With increasing numbers of consumers becoming or realising that they have intolerances and/or allergies, we wonder whether there could be ways to reduce the allergens in your product/s and on your allergen labels to appeal to another 5-10% of your market.

The presence of any allergen in a food product needs to be justified, for example, because it is fundamental to the nature of the product, it significantly reduces cost, solves technical or processing problems, improves organoleptic properties and so on.

We understand that in some cases, creating ‘free from’ products can have huge taste and cost implications, however, this is not always the case.

For example, here’s the ingredient declaration (listing) for a pie (some details have been left out to make it shorter):

Wheat Flour, Beef, Water, Margarine, Onions, Modified Starch, Salt, Sugar, Monosodium Glutamate, Pepper, Butter (Milk)

It’s clear that the pie contains two allergens, wheat and milk. So, people who are either coeliac or who suffer from a wheat or milk allergy or intolerance will avoid this product.  Could these allergens be removed?

It wouldn’t be possible to remove the wheat without significant changes to the product.  Gluten-free flours do give a different organoleptic experience and have a cost impact.

But the presence of the milk (in the butter) is more mysterious.  It’s clearly present in very small quantities since it appears near the end, after the MSG and pepper. 

By including butter, the manufacturer has immediately excluded the 5-10% of the population who have a milk intolerance or allergy from buying this product.  And most manufacturers would welcome a 5% boost in sales! 

Could butter be replaced with a non-allergenic alternative in NPD or reformulation?  We think it could!

Allergen Labelling: Eliminating allergens in your products to help boost sales!

With at least 5% of consumers being Dairy Intolerant, you may be limiting your sales audience unnecessarily

Natasha’s Law Guidance – Our Best Practice – Allergen Labelling

Natasha's Law Guidance. The law has changed and has extended the display and communication of allergen information in foods to include all foods that are pre-packed before the point of sale AND includes:

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