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Food law experts urge caution over naturalness and sugar claims
28 Oct 2025UK food businesses should beware when making naturalness and sugar claims, as regulation in this area is fraught with complexities, law and sustainability experts warn.
One health food wholesaler was pulled up by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK advertising regulator, in June over its marketing of “naturally sweet” jams.
The case was highlighted during a September roundtable run by the law firm DWF, in association with sustainability media and consultancy company Footprint, that was attended by representatives from businesses including Nestlé and Kingfisher Foods.
‘Natural’ jam with ‘no added sugar’ leaves bitter taste
“These jams are crafted with high-quality, naturally sweet ingredients,” stated CLF Distribution in a business-to-business advert that ran in December 2024. Below the headline, there was an image of four flavours of jam, the text within the image stating: “NO ADDED SUGAR? SWEET!”
The message continued: “These jams are crafted with high-quality, naturally sweet ingredients that deliver all the fruity flavour and richness of traditional jams without the sugar spike.”
But a complaint to the ASA challenged whether the claim “naturally sweet ingredients” was misleading because the products contained erythritol and steviol glycosides.
Erythritol, a sugar alcohol, is often commercially manufactured through a corn fermentation process, rather than having been directly isolated or extracted from a plant.
Purification of the sweetener also typically involves an ion exchange, which the ASA felt constituted too much processing to be considered a “naturally sweet ingredient”.
The regulator’s thinking on steviol glycosides went down a similar path. Though the sweetener is derived from a natural source – the stevia plant – isolating steviol glycosides requires multiple chemical processes including extraction with solvents, filtration, ion exchange, and crystallisation – again, too processed to be considered “natural” in the eyes of potential buyers and traders, according to the ASA’s analysis.
The regulator ruled that traders would understand that any processing needed to make a naturally found ingredient fit for human consumption would be “minimal”.
Ingredients like the erythritol and steviol glycosides used in the jams underwent more than minimal processing and so “naturally sweet” was deemed misleading.
Navigating naturalness claims
DWF’s food law experts noted that the ASA’s interpretation of “natural” aligned with UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) criteria that have been withdrawn.
Having dug through the National Archive website, solicitor Abigail Reay discovered that the definition of natural is “very, very old”.
The guidance she found noted that “‘natural’ means, essentially, that the product is comprised of natural ingredients, eg ingredients produced by nature, not the work of man or interred with by man”, she said.
As such, it is “misleading to use the term to describe foods or ingredients that employ chemicals to change their composition or comprise the products of new technologies, including additives and flavourings that are the product of the chemical industry or extracted by chemical processes”.
The processing of foods – in particular, the degree of processing and whether a product is ultra-processed – is under the spotlight, but hard definitions are hotly debated.
DWF’s lawyers advised food companies to avoid implying products are “natural” if they undergo chemical or industrial processing.
“If you are confident that you can make a ‘natural’ claim, ensure you hold the required substantiation to back this up,” said Reay.
Sugar claims can be a sticky subject
The ASA warned that claims like “sugar free”, “no added sugar”, and “natural sweeteners” may seem “like they are sprinkled around but, like sugar itself, marketers should use such claims carefully”.
In May, the regulator upheld a complaint against the UK science and nutrition company Zoe over a Facebook ad promoting its Daily 30+ supplement that included the claim: “This is a supplement revolution. No ultra-processed pills, no shakes, just real food.”
The complainant challenged whether the claim misleadingly implied that the product did not contain any ultra-processed ingredients.
The ASA noted that at least two ingredients in the food supplement – chicory root inulin and nutritional yeast flakes – were not whole foods and had been through more than a minimal level of processing, such that consumers would consider them to be ultra-processed foods (UPFs).
That ruling “clarifies the point that companies must avoid absolute or comparative claims in their advertising that can not be properly substantiated”, explained Mills and Reeve associate (food law) Jessica Burt and colleagues, in an analysis of the ASA findings.
For food and supplement brands, especially those operating within the health and wellness market, the ruling was “a timely reminder to use the term ‘ultra processed’ with care when communicating to consumers”, they added.