Using the preservative check

A walkthrough of the «Preservatives and market limits» block: choosing market and product type, reading the verdict and the contributions table, and closing a «Cannot be assessed» by declaring what your label says.

Goal

Find out whether the preservatives in a recipe go over the documented limit of the market you are selling into — and what to do when the block cannot pronounce on it.

It helps to have read what the preservative check is first, in particular why there is no approved state.

Before you start

A recipe with ingredients and their weights. With no weights there is no concentration to compute.
Knowing where you will sell and what the product is (a filling, a shell, an already assembled bonbon).
Nothing else: the calculation costs no credits.

Step by step

Open Formula validation

In the recipe editor, the side column has three tabs: Nutrition, Validation and Costs. Open Validation: inside the Formula validation panel, below the score and the water activity estimate, sits the Preservatives and market limits block.

If the recipe has no ingredients with weights yet, the block shows the No formula state: "Add ingredients with their weights and we will check the preservatives against the limits of the market you choose."

Say where you will sell

Under Where you will sell it, and what you are formulating, the Target market dropdown offers: European Union, United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Brazil.

If your account country is one of those six, it comes preselected with the note "We started from the country on your account (…). If you sell into a different market, change it here."
If it is not, the dropdown is left empty with the note "We have no limits loaded yet for the country on your account (…). Pick the market you will be selling into."

Until you pick a market the verdict is Cannot be assessed, with the reason: "the same dosage can sit under the limit in one market and over it in another, so we will not assume it for you."

Say what you are formulating

The Product type dropdown decides which food category applies and, with it, which limit applies. It has seven options:

Ganache filling
Praline filling
Pâte de fruit filling
Caramel filling
Truffle mass
Chocolate shell or coating
Finished bonbon

If the recipe has a formula type, one is suggested with the note "Suggested from the formula type on this recipe. Confirm it or change it: this is the answer that moves the result the most." The last two options are never suggested on their own: they describe a different phase from the one you are usually formulating and, if they happened to be right by chance, they would dilute the concentration.

Pick the option that describes what is in the ingredient list in front of you: if the weights are the filling's, it is a filling — even if the final product is a bonbon.

In markets where the limit is measured on the product as sold, the Share of the bonbon that is filling field appears, with the explanation "in this market the limit applies to the finished product, so we need to know how much shell it carries."

Without that figure the verdict is Cannot be assessed: the result would move with whatever the block assumed.

Read the verdict

At the top of the block there is a badge with one of the five states and, below it, a sentence with the actual figures. Next to it you get the instrument cited and the consultation date of the figure, and always — in all five states — the This is not a regulatory validation panel.

Where a figure supports it, a bar is drawn with two marks: Caution band (80 %) and Documented limit (100 %).

Look at the split, preservative by preservative

The Contribution per preservative table has four columns: Preservative, In the formula (grams), Concentration (mg/kg) and % of limit. The footer gives the Group total, which is the figure compared against the ceiling.

Above the table you get the Regulatory group and the species it is counted in (Expressed as sorbic acid, benzoic acid, the preservative as such…). Where the ceiling is a combined one, the table says so: "the limit applies to the total for the group, not to each preservative separately."

A figure that could not be worked out shows as a dash, never as a zero.

Below, the What the figure is calculated on section shows both readings — On the filling and On the finished bonbon — and marks which one governs in that market.

Read what could not be checked

If anything was left open, the What we could not check section appears, headed by this warning: "This is not small print: every line here is a reason the figure above may fall short."

It names, among other things, the unchecked ingredients, the preservatives that are in the formula but could not be quantified, and the limits whose verification is not up to date. A preservative with no figure is not worth zero: it still counts as present.

Close the gaps behind a "Cannot be assessed"

When the block cannot pronounce because it does not know whether an ingredient carries a preservative, there are two routes, depending on whose record it is.

If the record is your own. On the ingredient's own record, the Does this ingredient contain a preservative? section offers four options: I don't know, No preservative, It is a preservative and It contains one. Pick either of the last two and it asks for Which one?, How much it contains and What does that percentage refer to?. Leaving it on I don't know is a valid answer: it is recorded as missing data, never as a zero.

If the record belongs to the shared catalogue. Those records are seen by every user and you cannot edit them — but you have the packet in front of you. Whenever there are gaps left to close, the What we still need to know before we can assess this section appears, and next to each blocking ingredient sits the Tell us what my label says button. The form asks:

It contains no preservative — you have read the label and none of them is listed.
It does, and I know how much — then it asks Which one? (by name or by E number), How much? (the percentage on the label) and What is that percentage measuring?.

That last question is not a technicality: naming the salt ("potassium sorbate 0.1%") and giving it already converted ("expressed as sorbic acid") differ by close to 25 %. There is no "it contains some but I don't know how much" option: if you do not know the amount you declare nothing, and the record stays unchecked, which is exactly what it is.

Press Save what I said and the verdict is worked out again taking your answer into account.

What changes once you declare something

The result now rests on your word, and the screen says so. Instead of "Based on the data we hold", the block shows "Based on what you told us about …", with this warning: "We have not checked it ourselves: we have not seen that packet or that technical sheet. If the label does not say what you declared, the result above does not hold either."
Your declaration closes the ingredient gap, not the currency of the limit. Two different things: knowing what is in your tub says nothing about whether the rule we have documented is still the one in force. That is on us and is reported separately.
It applies to your account only. It does not change the record everyone else sees.
It is remembered. The next recipe with the same ingredient will not ask again. What you declared appears under What you have already told us about this formula, with its date and a Change it link, and can be withdrawn with Withdraw what I declared — which returns the record to "we don't know", which is not "it contains none".
Our figure wins when we have one. If the catalogue record already carries a quantified content, that is what enters the calculation: your declaration is stored but does not change the result.
Some gaps cannot be closed this way. If the block cannot work out which catalogue record a line of your formula points to, it says so and sends you back to the recipe's ingredient list: there is nothing to save about a line that could not be identified.

States that are not a verdict

These three states appear where the verdict would be and say nothing at all about your formula:

Badge	What it means
Checking	The calculation is running. "There is no verdict until this finishes. Nothing showing yet does not mean there is nothing to show."
Not checked	The check never ran. "We do not know whether this formula sits below or above any limit. No result is not a result." There is a Try again button; if it keeps failing, do not assume the formula is fine — it is still unchecked.
No formula	There are no ingredients with weights to assess.

Not checked is not the same as Cannot be assessed. The first means "we have not looked at it"; the second, "we looked and something is missing". Neither of them means the formula is fine.

How to get a firmer verdict

Declare what you know about the ingredients that block it. A single unchecked gram of an ingredient that might carry a preservative rules out the neutral state: there is no grace margin.
Get the product type right. It is the answer that moves the result the most, because it decides the food category and with it the limit.
Check the market before drawing conclusions. The same dosage can sit under the ceiling in one market, over it in another and be banned in a third.
Look at the consultation date of the limit. If the block says it is pending a check against the version in force, that figure cannot sustain anything reassuring.
Remember what the calculation cannot see: preservative arriving inside other ingredients, sulphites from raw materials and colours all sit outside it. What is unknown can only add.