In this article, you will find one (or more) answers to that. The following food vocabulary list offers you a brief overview of various labels, abbreviations, and terminology from the food and nutrition sector.
Plant-based = vegan = plant-based?
Vegan
A lifestyle that excludes any consumption of animal products. And this applies not only to nutrition, but also to clothing, make-up, and all other areas of life. Our I·DO juices and juice cleanses are, of course, 100% vegan.
Plant-based
A diet based on plant-based, unprocessed foods. However, eating plant-based does not mean that animal products are completely avoided. Rather, milk, cheese, or other products of animal origin are occasionally and consciously added to plant-based foods. This form of nutrition should therefore not be confused with veganism, in which animal products are completely excluded.
Gluten-free
The term gluten comes from Latin and means something like "glue" or "adhesive protein." It refers to a substance made of proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates that forms a rubbery mass when mixed with water and flour. Gluten is therefore very important for baking with flour . In its natural form, gluten is found in most grains such as wheat, barley, rye, spelt, emmer, and green spelt. People with a gluten intolerance, also called celiac disease, must avoid all of these foods. Due to an inflammatory disease of the intestinal mucosa, the intestine would otherwise be damaged. There are several foods that are naturally gluten-free, such as corn, rice, millet, amaranth, quinoa, soy, buckwheat, potatoes, fruit, vegetables, legumes, and many more. Other foods may be labeled as "gluten-free" if they contain less than two milligrams of gluten per 100 grams .
Lactose-free
Lactose, also called milk sugar, is a sugar that occurs naturally in milk. Lactose consists of two sugar molecules: galactose and glucose. In the human body, milk sugar is split into these two sugar parts by the enzyme lactase. About one in seven people in Germany suffers from a milk sugar intolerance (lactose intolerance) and cannot digest lactose at all or only with difficulty. For this reason, there is a wide range of lactose-free dairy products in which the milk sugar has already been broken down. For dairy products and cheese, the term "lactose-free" is legally regulated in Germany and allows for a lactose content of less than 0.1 grams per 100 grams. A natural alternative to lactose-free cow's milk is, of course, plant-based drinks of all kinds, which naturally contain no milk sugar .
Low Carb
As the English name suggests, Low Carb describes a diet that includes very few carbohydrates.
Raw Food
As the name implies, raw food refers to the consumption of raw foods, such as uncooked vegetables, untreated nuts, or similar items.
Slim Food
This term stands for foods with a low carbohydrate and fat content. This generally includes most fruit and vegetables as well as legumes. Specific Slim Foods include, for example, vegan foods such as chicory, white cabbage, lettuce, zucchini, or mango.
Umami
The word umami comes from Japanese and means something like "tasty" or "delicious," and that is exactly what it is intended to express. The Japanese Kikunae Ikeda discovered this taste in 1908, which is seen as the fifth basic taste alongside sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.
Umami describes a savory, hearty, piquant taste and is mainly perceived in the throat area. Since the taste is created by the salts of the amino acid glutamate, we taste umami more in protein-rich food. Naturally occurring glutamate is harmless and is contained in its natural form in, for example, tomatoes, yeast, parmesan, beans, or soy sauce. The typical umami taste is especially prominent in the Japanese broth "dashi," which contains brown algae as a savory ingredient.
Organic
For organic foods, specific requirements for their production are defined by EU legal regulations. Organic therefore stands for pesticide-free, GMO-free cultivation with species-appropriate animal husbandry. Furthermore, organic products in the food sector may only contain a few additives, must be free of flavor enhancers, artificial flavors, stabilizers, or synthetic sweeteners, and 95% of the ingredients must come from organic farming . You can find more about the labeling of organically grown foods in our magazine article on Organic & Organic Seals.
Carbon Footprint
In general, the CO2 footprint is a measure of all emissions directly or indirectly caused by a specific activity. A carbon footprint can be calculated for countries, companies, products, services, or individuals. For a product, all carbon dioxide emissions that occur during the manufacture, use, and disposal of a product, as well as all raw materials and services required, are taken into account. You can also practically calculate your own carbon footprint as an individual.
Climate-neutral
We are encountering the term climate neutrality more and more often with food. Basically, climate neutrality describes the balance between the emission of carbon in the form of greenhouse gases and their absorption from the atmosphere and corresponding conversion or compensation. Climate-neutral, therefore, does not mean CO2-free. Activities or processes are only CO2-free if they do not cause any harmful CO2 emissions during the entire process . For the production of food, it means for a company to be climate-neutral if it offsets all CO2 emissions emitted for the production and distribution of a product by supporting climate protection projects .
We at I·DO produce all our juices 100% climate-neutrally. We also support various climate protection projects both in Germany and worldwide.
The most important seals and logos
Fairtrade
Fairtrade is a certification system that marks products and raw materials that come from fair trade. The Fairtrade standards are based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements and are checked against specific criteria. In this way, Fairtrade offers farmers the opportunity to sell their goods under fair conditions and to cover the costs of sustainable production. The Fairtrade seal on products provides proof that economic, ecological, and socially compatible criteria are observed during production. Needless to say, our I·DO mir was Gutes cotton bag bears the Fairtrade seal and is made from Fairtrade cotton.
GEPA
The term GEPA is derived from the company's name at the time of its founding: Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Partnerschaft mit der Dritten Welt (Association for the Promotion of Partnership with the Third World). Today, the company is called GEPA - The Fair Trade Company and is the largest fair trade company in Europe. The main goals of GEPA are to educate consumers and to sustainably support producers in countries of the Global South. Furthermore, through concrete alternatives, lobbying, and political work, GEPA wants to contribute to a change in unjust world trade structures. GEPA fundamentally reinvests its profits into fair trade, for example directly into the transition to organic farming by trading partners. All products sold by GEPA, such as coffee, tea, honey, chocolate, and handicrafts, come 100% from fair trade with the utmost respect for people and nature .
GMO-free
The GMO-free seal ("Ohne Gentechnik"), state-controlled by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, identifies foods that are produced without the use of genetic engineering.
No flavor enhancers
The note "no flavor enhancers" on a product package indicates that the product was produced without flavor-enhancing additives in the sense of food law. A well-known flavor enhancer is glutamate, which enhances the taste of other ingredients without having a taste of its own. Flavor enhancers are considered very critical because they disturb the body's natural hunger and satiety sensation. The flavoring substance glutamate can, however, also occur in natural ingredients, such as in tomatoes, mushrooms, soy protein, or yeast . Yeast extract, for example, gives the food a certain spice, namely the taste of umami. Since yeast extract is made from processed natural yeast cells and is therefore of natural origin, it does not fall under the category of "flavor enhancers." Yeast extract can therefore be contained as a flavoring ingredient under the claim "No flavor enhancers" .
MSC
The MSC seal certifies fish and seafood from sustainable fisheries. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an international non-profit organization that campaigns against overfishing and the destruction of marine ecosystems. However, there are also critical voices regarding the MSC label, for example questioning the regulations on permitted bycatch and already overfished stocks. Nevertheless, critical voices are repeatedly heard—for instance, that even fisheries with high bycatch and fish from overfished stocks can be labeled with the MSC seal.
FSC
Although the seal of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) does not identify foods themselves, product packaging can be marked with it. The FSC seal is an international certification for sustainable forest management and proves that the wood used for the respective product comes from forests with environmentally friendly management. The environmentally friendly, socially just, and economically viable use of the forest is intended to contribute to the long-term preservation of the forests of our earth .
V-Label
Surely you have mixed up the two V-Labels in the supermarket before. There are actually two variants: the Vegan Label and the Vegetarian Label. The V-Labels are an internationally registered trademark for the uniform labeling of vegetarian and vegan products and services.
The Vegetarian Label stands for products without animal ingredients, whereby products from living animals such as milk, eggs, or honey can be used.
Products marked with the Vegan Label, by contrast, are produced 100% without animal ingredients, processing aids, additives, carriers, flavors, or enzymes. Thus, every step of the production chain from cultivation to the delivery of food with this label is vegan.
Conclusion
Finding one's way through the jungle of abbreviations, labels, and designations for foods and forms of nutrition is not that easy. Even though vegan and organic have become firmly established parts of general usage, there are more differences than one might suspect.
We hope that we have been able to provide you with a rough overview of the most important vocabulary for 2023, so that you no longer get lost in the jungle of food terminology :)
