Clean Label Guide

Clean Label

Essentials Guide

Introduction ”Clean label” is emerging industry nomenclature that refers 1) specifically to a packaged good’s lack of common synthetic, highly processed, or potentially harmful additives—artificial flavors, highfructose corn syrup, triclosan, and the like—and 2) generally to the package’s inclusion of values-driven certifications and call-outs, such as non-GMO, organic, vegan, free-from, and others.

The term “Clean Label”—like “natural”—has no formal industry or regulatory definition, and until recently was generally unknown among manufacturers and marketers in the food and nutrition spaces.

“One can imagine that in the not too distant future, Clean Label will be not the target but the minimally acceptable floor for an ingredient declaration.”

— Devin Stagg, vice president of strategy and business development at supplier PLT Health Solutions

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“We’re one of the original Clean Label companies,” said Steve Peirce, CEO of RIBUS. “But even five years ago people would come up to our booth at trade shows thinking we sold cleaning supplies.”

Other companies have since caught on, and major suppliers have begun to make “Clean Label” a major component of their brand or value proposition.

Ingredion, for one, since changing its name from Corn Products International in 2012, has made Clean Label a central selling point for its line of functional starches, five of which now carry organic certification. PLT Health Solutions considers Clean Label an integral characteristic to evaluating commercial potential of new ingredients.

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“One can imagine that in the not too distant future, Clean Label will be not the target but the minimally acceptable floor for an ingredient declaration,” said Devin Stagg, vice president of strategy and business development at supplier PLT Health Solutions.

So is “Clean Label” the new “natural”? No—at least not for consumers. For one, “Clean Label” is an industry term and not a consumer term. Two, despite its lack of definition, natural still carries heft in the marketplace: According to New Hope Natural Media’s NEXT Trend Database, 25% of products exhibited at Natural Products Expo over the last two years carried the word “natural” on their label.

Clean Label is instead an insider term that allows formulators to advertise that they have one-for-one substitutions that can erase maligned ingredients from a manufacturer’s ingredient deck.

Some industry veterans attribute the rise of the Clean Label trend to a lack of new blockbuster products in the market. A new omega-3 or super fruit might encourage consumers to think more about innovation and health rather than cleanliness.

“The category differentiator now is safety and efficacy,” said George Pontiakos of BI Nutraceuticals, “and the consumer views the safer product as having a cleaner label.”

Market Trends The Clean Label trend is led entirely by consumers, albeit unconsciously.

Consumer sales of natural, organic, non-GMO, and free-from products continue to experience consistent double-digit growth, but lumping these categories under the “Clean Label” heading is so far strictly an industry phenomenon. A November 2014 Nutrition Business Journal survey of 363 consumers revealed that 47% of respondents had never heard of the term “Clean Label” and another 32% had heard the term but did not understand it. This lack of understanding is no hindrance to marketers in the food and nutrition industries, since a Clean Label will speak for itself.

So, for consumers, what makes a Clean Label clean? Front-of-package certifications and declarations serve the immediate purpose of differentiating a natural brand from its conventional counterparts, but core consumers are still apt to go straight for the ingredients panel when evaluating a product.

For some brands—especially in the supplement industry, where product differentiation is much more nuanced—Clean Label efforts extend to marketing literature beyond the label in order to tell stories of transparency and traceability. The strongest brands employ all three—front-of-package, back-of-package, and off-package storytelling—to capture core consumers.

“The most common front-of-pack claims our customers make when using our Clean Label ingredients are ‘natural,’ ‘organic,’ ‘free from additives/ preservatives,’ and ‘non-GMO.’” —Angelina de Castro, Ingredion

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Consumer Awareness of the Term “Clean Label” 10% Heard and take into consideration

7% Heard and heavily influences 47% Never Heard

3% Heard but minimal impact 1% Heard but no impact

32% Heard but do not understand

Source: Nutrition Business Journal survey conducted between November 18th to November 25th 2014.

363 survey takers were asked: “What is your awareness and understanding of the term “Clean Label” when it comes to food, beverage, supplements and/or personal care items.”

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Front-of-package NON-GMO For front-of-package certifications and declarations, nonGMO is the new king. “Natural,” “all natural,” “100% natural,” and similar terms have begun to wane as onpackage descriptors because of its lack of definition and concomitant of the threat of class action lawsuits. Non-GMO has trumped natural 1) because it comes with a rigorous certification from the Non-GMO Project should a manufacturer choose to go that route and 2) because it tells a story in the fewest words possible. Nutrition Business Journal calls non-GMO the “blazing neon stamp of traceability.” Sales of non-GMO products grew 10% to $190 million in the U.S. in 2014, according to preliminary NBJ estimates.

According to Devin Stagg, vice president of strategy and business development at supplier PLT Health Solutions, some manufacturers are requesting Non-GMO Project verification on certain ingredients rather than the supplier’s assurance that those ingredients had never been genetically modified in the first place.

And the verification is no easy process. Testing must be performed on every ingredient to ensure that presence of GMOs falls below a threshold of 0.9%.

Documentation must trace every ingredient through its supply chain to ensure no possible contamination. Manufacturers must segregate ingredients that meet the standards from those that don’t, with certain exceptions for micro-ingredients that make up less than 0.5% of the finished product.

While this system may make logistical sense for food companies with five to 10 ingredients in their products, supplement companies that manufacture multivitamins or combination formulas with 70 or more ingredients stand no chance of achieving verification without committing a significant—perhaps unreasonable—amount of time and money.

“It took us two years, and I was working 80 hours a week,” Bethany Davis, director of regulatory affairs for FoodState, told Nutrition Business Journal.

The manufacturer isn’t the only one who suffers burdensome record-keeping under the Non-GMO Project verification paradigm. One major challenge for suppliers in this industry is to keep up with the documentation and paperwork required by manufacturers in order to receive the Verified seal.

“If I roll back the clock 10 years, I got maybe three to five requests a year for third-party audits,” said Steve Peirce of RIBUS. “Today [manufacturers] want the third-party audit plus one to 20 pages of questions about your product. It is really burdensome and it may prevent new companies from coming in.”

Non-GMO Sales & Growth: 2007-2017e $325,000

12%

$260,000

6%

$195,000

0%

$130,000

-6%

$65,000

-12%

$0

04

05

06

07

08

Sales

09

10

11

12

13

Growth

Source: Nutrition Business Journal estimates ($mil., consumer sales)

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14e 15e 16e 17e

-18%

Front-of-package ORGANIC USDA Certified Organic, though it has lost momentum to the Non-GMO Verified Project seal (despite the fact that non-GMO status is implicit in organic certification), remains a powerhouse clean-label category. U.S. organic industry sales grew 12% to 35 billion in 2013.

“USDA Organic is a promise of better quality, while Non-GMO Project Verified is a promise of what we kept out of product,” said Jeff Brams of whole-food supplement manufacturer Garden of Life. “We feel like we need both messages to reach consumers.”

“USDA Organic is a promise of better quality, while Non-GMO Project Verified is a promise of what we kept out of product. We feel like we need both messages to reach consumers.

— Jeff Brams of whole-food supplement manufacturer Garden of Life

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According to Stagg of PLT Health Solutions, organic is one of the main requests that his company receives from supplement manufacturer customers.

RIBUS’s Steve Peirce said that while organic is a very strong growth area for his company (half of his sales are from organic rice ingredients), downstream organic clients tend to be smaller than their natural or conventional counterparts. “Every time we pick up a few organic customers, we’ll get one in natural that will make up the volume,” he said.

FREE-FROM Beyond just gluten-free, we can extend the freefrom category to other allergens, such as the eight major allergens recognized by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soy); and from there to the dozen recognized by Canada; and then the 24 recognized by the European Commission, which include such ingredients as mustard, celery seed and sesame.

Other than allergens, products will highlight their lack of conventional additives, such as artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, emulsifiers, stabilizers, flavor enhancers, plasticizers, excipients, binders, fillers.

Front-of-package VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/ PLANT-BASED According to a 2012 Gallup poll, 5% of U.S. adults (about 16 million people) identify as vegetarian, and 2% identify as vegan. A 2011 Harris Interactive study also suggests that one-third of Americans are eating vegetarian or vegan meals more often, even if they don’t identify as vegetarian or vegan. The plant-based trend has truly arrived, especially in the supplement industry, where veggie capsules and plant-based proteins have seen sales skyrocket, and the incidence of vegan claims on supplement bottles has jumped.

5%

of U.S. adults (about 16 million people) identify as vegetarian, and 2% identify as vegan.

KOSHER/HALAL Kosher and Halal have become marks of quality and cleanliness in recent years more so than for religious observances. Many manufacturers have received Kosher certification for their facilities in recent years and the certification requires that all ingredients that pass through must carry Kosher assurance. This has put pressure on supply companies to achieve the certification in order to do business with Clean Label manufacturers. Steve Peirce of RIBUS said the numberone request he receives from manufacturer customers is that his rice ingredients are certified Kosher, and an emerging number have begun to request Halal.

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Kosher and Halal have become marks of quality and cleanliness in recent years more so than for religious observances.

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Back-of-package

The Kitchen Test If I can find this ingredient in my kitchen, it’s probably okay.

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Back-of-package ingredient decks follow simple Clean Labeling rules of thumb. The “kitchen test” is commonly cited by consumers as a determining factor for naturalness: If I can find this ingredient in my kitchen, it’s probably okay. Amy’s, for example, advertises its organic canned soups as containing “real food ingredients that people use in their own kitchens.” The trouble here is that the recipes one prepares in one’s kitchen aren’t typically designed to last on shelf for six months with no loss of taste or texture.

Some companies have taken the opposite strategy in order to make common kitchen ingredients sound more appealing. Chobani, for example, became a poster child for the trend of replacing the word “sugar” in its ingredients list with “evaporated cane juice,” for which the company was sued for misrepresentation in a high-profile class action lawsuit in 2012. The case was eventually dismissed, but other brands were later hit with similar lawsuits, such as Zola, Steaz, Blue Diamond, Late July Organics, and Trader Joe’s.

Another common no-no for ingredient decks is the unpronounceable, chemistry-lab-sounding word, a trope used often in advertisements for Breyer’s Ice Cream in the 90s to call out competitors. The trouble with this trend is that a customer may be attracted to a fortified product with, for example, “Vitamin C” written on the front of the label, but detracted by “ascorbic acid” on the back.

According to NBJ’s November 2014 consumer survey, high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, triclosan, artificial colors, and sodium lauryl sulfate sat at the top of the list of ingredients that consumers attempt to avoid in packaged food. For supplements, magnesium stearate, lac resin and gelatin are commonly cited by Clean Label manufacturers as tablet and capsule additives they attempt to avoid.

(More on these later.)

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Off-package Since the Clean Label ethos, at least within the core of the natural products industry, extends beyond the disinclusion of problem ingredients to stories around transparency, traceability, purity, safety and sourcing dynamics. Especially for the supplement industry, where label size is so much smaller than in food and beverage, and where a Clean Label story can be so much longer and more nuanced, the capacity to market one’s “cleanliness” requires more than what can be put on a label.

“We just disclose everything. We spend the money to make sure everything is completely transparent.”

—Todd King, vice president of marketing, Gaia Herbs

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Say you have in-house testing on all raw ingredients that go into your products, like NOW Foods does. Can you fit that tidbit on a label? Will consumers care? Say you’ve traded up from solvent-extracted botanicals strictly to supercritical CO2 extracted botanicals—will consumers even know what that means?

For some, a Clean Label supplement must carry a unique and tactile story of transparency. Now in its fifth year, Gaia Herbs’ Meet Your Herbs campaign offers a perfect example of a Clean Label ethos that extends far beyond the label itself. Meet Your Herbs allows consumers to type a unique number written on the back of every Gaia bottle into an online portal, and find out where each ingredient in that product was grown, the date when they were harvested and processed, and the name of the QA/QC technician who tested the batch. A new add-on to the program allows consumers to see on a digital map, for the 50% of Gaia’s raw materials grown on its farm, exactly where on Earth their product grew.

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“We just disclose everything,” said Todd King, vice president of marketing. “We spend the money to make sure everything is completely transparent.”

Gaia’s investment in transparency allows for consumers to investigate for themselves the company’s Clean Label commitment through an off-package portal, and as a result Gaia doesn’t have to cram an overwhelming amount of marketing copy onto its product label.

For some companies, the Clean Label trend applies most directly to efficacy. Since the quality in the supplement ingredient supply chain can vary so greatly, two identical Supplement Facts panels may refer to vastly different qualities of product.

According to Weiguo Zhang, president of chondroitin supplier Synutra, this variability means that in order to be a Clean Label product in the supplement industry, your products needs simply to work better than its competitors.

“As the leading Chondroitin ingredient supplier in the world,” said Zhang, “we help joint health supplement manufacturers to keep their labels cleaner by guaranteeing the Chondroitin they put in their product is clean.” To build a story around the source and quality of one’s ingredients adds context to a brand that a product label, no matter how clean, cannot hope to achieve.

Formulator Trends & Controversial Ingredients Over the last two decades, consumer perceptions of what constitutes “healthy food” have changed dramatically. The “no fat,” “low fat,” “sugar-free,” and “fortified” paradigm has given way to consumer preference to products free from synthetic chemical processing agents. The new consumer prioritizes descriptors such as “fresh,” “whole,” “minimally processed,” or “close to nature.” “’Whole food’ is a much better term for consumers [than ‘clean label’] because it combines all the aspects of clean label into something ‘real’ — and corresponds to consumer preference to get their nutrients from foods instead of synthetic sources,” said Devin Stagg, vice president of strategy and business development at supplier PLT Health Solutions. “But even this definition is changing as we see things like ‘vegan,’ ‘local food,’ ‘farm-to-table,’ ‘fair trade,’ and ‘nutrient dense’ become issues that consumers care about.”

Frankly, most of these new and attractive labels add up to another word: “perishable.”

To develop and market products that could only be made with ingredients found in one’s kitchen pantry would be a noble pursuit if it weren’t so patently naive in regard to the exigencies of the modern food system. Consistency, replicability, manufacturing compatibility, shelf life, distribution and safety all require additives or food science applications. But conventional synthetic emulsifiers, flowants, stabilizers, solvents, preservatives, colors, flavors, texture enhancers and other additives are no longer acceptable for ingredient decks.

The following list includes some of the most controversial and often replaced ingredients in the natural & organic food and dietary supplements industries:

Problem Ingredients Percentage of consumers putting a high priority on avoiding ingredients HFCS Artificial Colors Trans Fat Sodium Lauryl Sulfate Triclosan Caramel Coloring Maltodextrin Carrageenan Soy Lecithin Carmine Sugar - Beet/Cane Natural Flavorings Potassium Carbonate 0%

23%

45%

68%

90%

Source: Nutrition Business Journal survey conducted between November 18th to November 25th 2014. 363 survey takers were asked: “Rate the degree in which you avoid the following ingredients.”

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Formulator Trends & Controversial Ingredients HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sweetener derived from corn starch, is a major no-no for the natural products industry. According to NBJ’s 2014 Consumer Survey, HFCS is the number-one additive that consumers avoid when evaluating a product’s ingredient list.

A primary concern about HFCS is its major role in contributing to the worldwide obesity epidemic, though scientific consensus suggests that the sweetener is no more detrimental to health than traditional cane sugar.

Another concern for natural consumers is that HFCS is most commonly derived from genetically modified corn.

Since HFCS has been maligned for so long, though, to offer a non-GMO certified high-fructose corn syrup would be too little too late.

Organic cane sugar is the obvious alternative to high-fructose corn syrup for manufacturers looking for an equivalent nutritive, caloric and taste profile.

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Alternatives: Organic cane sugar is the obvious alternative to high-fructose corn syrup for manufacturers looking for an equivalent nutritive, caloric and taste profile. But the larger trend at work is a move toward natural zero-calorie sweeteners, such as stevia and monkfruit (lo han guo). Cargill is the leader in the stevia realm with its Truvia brand.

A major player in monkfruit is BioVittoria, whose PUREFRUIT brand is distributed through Tate & Lyle.

For low-glycemic products, PLT Health Solutions has Benecarb, a molasses-based ingredient. When added to foods at an inclusion rate of about 4%-6% of carbohydrate content, Benecarb can claim to lower the glycemic index up to 20% and can be labeled as molasses.

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EXCIPIENTS

A variety of artificial or highly processed excipients are used industry-wide by supplement manufacturers.

Ninety-percent of supplements are sold in tablets or capsules, and these formats require a number of binding and flowing agents to ensure product consistency and machine lubrication. Magnesium stearate, lac resin, talc, sodium citrate, and others are ubiquitous in tableting.

Alternatives: Supplement manufacturer

Garden of Life spent two years of R&D time developing a vegan, non-GMO tablet that does not contain magnesium stearate, vegetable stearate, lac resin or other traditional fillers for its recently introduced My Kind Organics line. The company worked with contract manufacturer Nutritional Labs of Missoula, Montana, and patented the newly discovered tablet recipe.

Rice extract is another potential excipient replacement, and it works as well as magnesium stearate to keep machines lubricated during mixing.

Formulator Trends & Controversial Ingredients GELATIN

One of the biggest sea changes in the supplement industry has been relatively subtle: the gradual replacement of gelatin capsules with vegetablesource capsules. Gelatin is a hydrolyzed form of collagen derived from animal byproducts and is often used in food products such as marshmallows and gummies. In the supplement industry, gelatin is the primary coating agent for capsules. Gelatin is problematic for the natural products industry because it can’t be certified Kosher or Halal and is neither vegetarian nor vegan.

Alternatives: In the food industry, gelatin

“Our use of vegetarian capsules before 2000 was maybe 5%, 10% tops of our capsule demand.

Today it’s about 40%.”

— Sam Vallabhaneni, vice president of New Product

is often replaced with plant-based options such as agar, carrageenan, pectin or konjak. In supplements, the major vegetable-source alternative comes from pullulan, a cocktail of plant fiber and gum. “Our use of vegetarian capsules before 2000 was maybe 5%, 10% tops of our capsule demand. Today it’s about 40%,” said Sam Vallabhaneni, vice president of New Product Development at contract manufacturer Rasi Labs in New Jersey. The major supplier of vegetarian capsules is Capsugel under the VCaps brand. In 2013, Capsugel achieved Non-GMO Project Verification on its Vcaps Plus and Plantcaps products.

Development at contract manufacturer Rasi Labs

MALTODEXTRIN

This glucose-rich starch derivative is used most often in sports gels, drinks, and bars for its ability to thicken products without adding sweetness and its ease of digestibility. It’s also used to add texture to baked goods, add moisture to low-fat products like salad dressings, and add bulk to artificial sweeteners.

Maltodextrin is on the decline in the natural products industry, however, because it is heavily processed and often derived from genetically modified crops.

Alternatives: Ingredient company Austrade

Inc. offers a Non-GMO Project Verified maltodextrin derived from corn. Organic tapioca maltodextrin made from cassava has also appeared on the market. And some sports nutrition companies have begun using brown rice syrup as a replacement.

SOY LECITHIN

Lecithin is a fatty substance that is chemically extracted from soybeans and used in a variety of applications.

It serves as a texturizer, stabilizer, preservative and cocoa substitute and can be found in such products as baked goods, salad dressings, nut butters, candy, pasta, and pizza dough. Concern has risen among consumer advocates about trace levels of hexane, phytoestrogen content, and GMO source material.

Alternatives: Organic Soy Lecithin was first produced by Clarkson Grain and they were the ones to change the Organic regulations. Austrade Inc. sells solvent-free, non-GMO, and organic soy lecithin and sunflower lecithin, and demand is high. Rice Extract functions as a powdered alternative to soy lecithin for oil in water systems.

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Formulator Trends & Controversial Ingredients CITRIC ACID

Citric acid boosts flavor in soft drinks, juices, wines, powdered beverages, and candies and acts as a preservative and anti- oxidant in creams, fats, mayonnaises, dairy products, and ice creams. The acid occurs naturally in fruits, but is produced industrially through fermentation and solvent extraction. The major controversy surrounding citric acid is the potential use of genetically modified starter molds or sugars for the fermentation process to create the ingredient.

Alternatives: Like soy lecithin, a non-

industrial version of citric acid is not commercially viable at this point, so suppliers have focused on creating non-GMO and organic versions.

Starbucks announced in 2012 that it would replace carmine with lycopene-based extract in its smoothies and Frappuccinos.

CARMINE

Also known as cochineal extract, carmine is a deep red acid expelled from the bodies of dead cochineal beetles when they are crushed. The extract is used as a food dye alternative to artificial reds, pinks and purples. Carmine carries a fairly solid safety profile, but it suffers from a considerable “ick” factor, a volatile price, and it cannot be used in vegetarian or Kosher products.

Alternatives: Natural colors derived from beet and grape skins are currently in common use in the natural products market. Red dye derived from the lycopene in tomatoes is a prominent ingredient from Isreal-based Lyco-Red — which is marketed in

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the USA by PLT Health Solutions — and has become especially popular since Starbucks announced in 2012 that it would replace carmine with lycopene-based extract in its smoothies and Frappuccinos. ChR Hansen, the Denmark-based world leader in natural color manufacturing, is reportedly researching a non-insectderived carmine created via a fermentation process.

MODIFIED STARCH

Modified starches, or starch derivatives, are physically or chemically altered native starches commonly derived from corn, wheat, potato and tapioca.

Modified starches are used as emulsifiers, stabilizers and thickening agents in such food products as bakery items, dairy, soups, sauces, dressings, and beverages.

The word “modified” in this instance does not refer to genetic modification, though the starches may be derived from genetically modified source ingredients.

Consumers remain suspicious of anything labeled as “modified” and manufacturers have begun to move to non-modified alternatives.

Alternatives: Major suppliers of modified starch have doubled down on their offerings of non-modified starches. Ingredion offers 35 different starches through its NOVATION line, five of which carry organic certification. Tate & Lyle launched a competing line of starches, CLARIA, in October 2014.

Formulator Trends & Controversial Ingredients SILICON DIOXIDE

Silicon dioxide (or silica) is an anti-caking agent used in powdered foods and dietary supplements and is derived through mining and subsequent mineral purification. Ingested orally, the compound is nontoxic, though inhaling the powdered mineral has been linked to respiratory and autoimmune diseases.

Alternatives: Effective Nov. 3, 2014,

USDA Certified Organic products cannot use silicon dioxide as long as “certified organic rice hulls” are commercially available. The news has been a boon to rice hull suppliers, such as RIBUS. Rice hulls naturally gather silica from soil, and after steam sterilizing and grinding, the hull can replace silicon dioxide in a product and carry the term “rice concentrate” and/or “rice hull” in a number of nonliquid applications.

Effective Nov. 3, 2014, USDA Certified Organic products cannot use silicon dioxide as long as “certified organic rice hulls” are commercially available.

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SOLVENTS

The problem with making botanical extracts or food is the use of solvents like methanol, ethanol, hexane, methylene chloride, and chloroform. These are harsh chemicals, and nobody wants them as part of the healing herbs or foods they consume.

Alternatives: Supercritical CO2 extraction

has emerged as a very popular non-solvent extraction method. (Gaia Herbs, for one, uses supercritical CO2 extraction on a majority of its herbs & botanicals.) The trouble with this method is that it’s far more expensive than solvent extraction. Water extraction is another option to consider. A Canadian company, Mazza Innovation, has developed a method that produces clean bioactives from plant materials—without the need for organic solvents like ethanol or methanol.

Called the PhytoClean(TM) Method, Mazza’s method pressurizes water at moderate temperatures, lowering its polarity, which increases the water’s ability to solubilize clean bioactive ingredients. In effect, the water behaves like an organic solvent.

Conclusion Clean Label is a moving target. Its scope has broadened in recent years making it that much harder to define. But consumers have been quite outspoken that they want “whole,” “simple,” “natural,” and “minimally processed” foods (however nebulous the definitions of those terms may be), and they’re willing to trade up their dollar for them.

Clean Label is not without its challenges. Formulators must struggle to recreate the flavor, color, texture, appearance, shelf stability, and process tolerance of products without the triedand-true (and cheap) artificial ingredients of yesteryear. But if the consumer is willing to trade up, the manufacturer and supplier must be willing to follow suit—or fall behind.

Underwritten By RIBUS, Inc. www.RIBUS.com Laurie Wittenbrink info@RIBUS.com • 314-727-4287 A raw material manufacturer, RIBUS, Inc. produces USDA certified organic rice extract and rice concentrate, as well as conventionally sourced rice concentrate ingredients, all North American sourced, manufactured and distributed.

Food scientists know ingredients are all about functionality. RIBUS, Inc. uses rice bran and hulls to obtain the required functionality. Organic, natural and non-GMO ingredients can replace Soy Lecithin, Monoglycerides, Silicon Dioxide and Mg Stearate. Removing chemistry lab-sounding words provides Clean Label alternatives preferred by consumers.

PLT Health Solutions. www.plthealth.com Robert Berman: 973-984-0900 x214 PLT Health Solutions is a discoverer, developer, and marketer of high-quality, scientifically-supported ingredient solutions for the natural products, food & beverage and cosmeceuticals markets. Our goal is to bring innovative and impactful solutions that help our consumer products customers develop new concepts, new products and grow successful brands. Helping customers to deliver a clean label is an important goal of PLT and is one of the main issues the company considers during its new ingredient development process.

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