Better food deserves better labelling

"The problem is what happens next, when companies start stretching the definition of what counts as an ingredient."

Now that more people are becoming aware of ultra processed food, ingredient lists are becoming much more important. People are turning packets over, scanning labels, questioning additives and looking for foods that feel closer to something they could actually make at home.

Food companies have noticed. Many big food companies are changing their products and Marks and Spencer are a good example. Their 'Only … Ingredients' range has had a lot of attention on social media, and rightly so, they are doing something genuinely positive. Emulsifiers, stabilisers and flavourings are being removed, showing that food can be produced on a mass scale without the need for additives. Their ingredient lists are getting shorter and their foods are being made simpler.

That shift matters. The multi billion pound food companies rarely change unless they are pushed, and the fact that large retailers are showing they can reformulate products without unnecessary additives is a very good thing.

So just to be clear (before I get jumped on!). Improving food is good. I am all for that.

What I feel less comfortable with is how some of these changes are being talked about and marketed.

More and more foods are now sold using phrases like 'only X ingredients' or 'just a few simple ingredients'. At first, that feels pretty reassuring. But look a little more closely, and those numbers are often doing a little bit of work behind the scenes.

ONLY 4 INGREDIENTS?

Ingredients can be grouped together and counted as one (i.e. multi flour). Ingredients made up of several parts can be treated as a single item (i.e. dark chocolate). Legally required fortification, like the vitamins and minerals added back into white flour, can just quietly disappear from the front of the packet. The full ingredient list is still there on the back, because it is mandatory, but the big message on the front tells a simpler story, relying on most people not looking any further.

Processing really does matter. It affects the nutritional value of food and how it affects your body. White flour needs to be fortified because processing removes much of what was there naturally. A short ingredient list does not automatically mean a food is less processed or better for you.

I SEE ELEVEN INGREDIENTS. I am also wondering why this isn't suitable for people with a milk, soya or egg allergies.

Not everything that is used to make food has to appear on an ingredient list. Some additives are known as processing aids and they don't legally need to be listed if they aren't present in meaningful amounts in the final product (NutriCalc, 2023). This is standard across the food system, but it does mean that a short ingredient list does not always tell the full story.

As cleaner labels become more valuable to the food industry, there is a real risk of label washing, where foods look simpler on paper than they really are.

This is not solely a Marks & Spencer issue, and the examples I have used are not particularly bad. However, they illustrate a broader pattern within the food industry. In the past, when low fat foods became popular, sugar increased. When high protein became fashionable, ultra processing increased too. When plant based foods took off, additives followed. Now we are in a new phase, where 'few ingredients' and 'only X ingredients' are becoming the next big selling point.

ONLY 4 INGREDIENTS?

The problem is not the reformulation. That part is welcome. The problem is what happens next, when companies start stretching the definition of what counts as an ingredient.

Bread is a good example. Legally, a loaf might contain around eleven ingredients. For marketing purposes, those ingredients can be grouped and reframed as four. On the shelf, it becomes 'ONLY 4 INGREDIENTS'. That gap between what is legally there and what is being highlighted is where it starts to test my trust.

If a product is genuinely simple, it doesn't need that kind of framing. When nothing is grouped, renamed or ignored, the ingredient list speaks for itself. When companies try to simplify something that is a little bit complicated, it starts to feel less like transparency and more like marketing.

None of this means the food itself is bad. Marks and Spencer are improving their products, removing additives and responding to consumers real concerns about ultra processed food. That is a good thing. But selective marketing shifts the focus away from transparency and towards storytelling.

OR IS IT SIX INGREDIENTS?

Am I being pedantic? Maybe. But it is possible that two things can be true at once. Food can be better whilst the messaging around it can still be questionable.

The uncomfortable truth is that 'simple' does not sell as well as 'only 4 ingredients'. People are busy. We scan rather than read. Good food still exists in a commercial system, and marketing is always about perception.

I don't think that this is me being cynical. It is recognising a pattern. Industries rarely push back against consumer awareness. They absorb the language of the movement. This happened with tobacco, fossil fuels, wellness culture and so called natural products. Clean labels risk becoming yet another thing that the consumer has to decode.

The whole move towards reducing ultra processed food is not about attacking brands (although I do sometimes feel angry towards big food - see a previous post here.) It is about transparency, trust and helping people to make informed choices. Reformulating food is genuinely positive. However selective labelling is unnecessary and risks setting a precedent that others will take further. We might end up back where we started, or worse, not knowing what is actually in our food at all.

If food is simple, real food, then it doesn't need iffy marketing to sell it. As people become more informed, I think the real challenge for food companies is not just changing what is in the food, but being honest about how they talk about it.

*'Processing aids are used for technical reasons in manufacturing or processing foods and beverages. There may be a small residue of the aid left in the product after processing. However, it is not necessary to include them in the ingredient declaration (unless of course they contain some allergen'.

NutriCalc (2023) Food Labelling: Processing Aids. NutriCalc Expert Paper, 19 July. Available at: https://www.nutricalc.co.uk/expert-papers/food-labelling-processing-aids/ (Accessed: 6 January 2026).