11 Dec 2013 12 Key Trends in Food, Nutrition & Health 2014
Key Trend 5: Energy –“Weight Wellness” – consumer thinking re-defines a market
The “weight management” trend might be better renamed “Weight Wellness” – a name that not only better describes the way the majority of people now think about weight but also better summarises where the main opportunities lie for food and beverage companies.
In terms of consumer behaviour, fad diets and “magic bullets” have not gone away. The recent 5:2 regime joins the Paleo Diet, the French Woman Diet, the Blood-Type Diet, the Gene Smart Diet, the Baby Food Diet, Dukan, Atkins and a host of others which many consumers try for a time – sometimes getting good short-term results – and then give up.
But alongside these approaches is a degree of mindfulness about weight and its connection to wellness that now underlies many – perhaps even most – people’s daily eating decisions.
Entrepreneur Lizanne Falsetto, founder of highly-successful brand thinkThin, describes weight wellness as “an optimal weight range at which our bodies feel healthy and happy. This is not defined or dictated by aesthetic, shape, weight or tape measure—it is the emotional outcome of feeling good, energized, funny, confident, sexy and living a life fi lled with joy and laughter.”
Key points:
Weight wellness: Weight management is no longer a special category of foods. Consumers have changed how they think about weight and their everyday food choices. For this reason we have renamed this trend: “Weight Wellness” – a name that better summarises where the main opportunities lie for food and beverage companies.
• Signifi cant shift: A confluence of several trends that have been emerging over the last 10 years is creating a new dynamic, turning some business models into losers, creating winners and losers among ingredients and making it more diffi cult than ever to formulate strategy. Unilever and Nestle’s weight management strategies lie in tatters, while entrepreneurs are proving themselves to be more competent at connecting to the consumer dynamics now driving the market
• Business model broken? One of the two key business models – “pay for service” and “pay for products, get service free” – is in trouble and may even be a broken model. Technology is enabling people to make more individualised choices – and has contributed to the fall of one of the main business models.
• Rise of protein: Food and beverage weight management strategy is dominated by the rise of protein. Science-based companies have invested huge sums in weight management ingredients over the years but it is a “natural” ingredient – protein – that has won consumers’ attention in foods and beverages.
• Fall of the “magic bullet”: Consumers are reluctant to accept magic bullet science ingredients in foods and beverage – the future for these ingredients is likely to be in supplements. As Special K shows, success comes from no added science, no R&D, just good marketing of a tangible promise based on consuming what is just conventional food – breakfast cereal.
• Merging with sports nutrition: Weight management is now the main driver of growth for sports nutrition products, which remains one of the few categories consumers can go to for high-quality protein in a convenient form.
Key Trend 6: The snackification of everything
Snacking is an over-arching trend in food and health, affecting every category, every type of food and creating a blurring of boundaries between categories as consumers shop multiple aisles in the supermarket for a convenient snack between meals or a quick and easy meal for one.
Snacking is at the core of strategy for a host of companies. A key motivation for the relaunch of part of Kraft as Mondelez was “to unleash a global snacking powerhouse,” chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld told investors. Snacking has even redefined one of the main meal occasions of the day: breakfast.
• Snackification / drinkification: PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi famously said, “We see the emerging opportunity to ‘snackify’ beverages and ‘drinkify’ snacks as the next frontier in food and beverage convenience.” It’s a point of view that summarises the way that categories are blurring and how changing consumer habits are creating opportunities to create totally new propositions.
• Snacking anytime: Healthy snacking concepts are redefining meal occasions, snacking is now shorthand for single serve convenient consumption for multiple occasions – as can be seen most clearly in breakfast.
• Fresh ideas: A focus on building markets for new snack concepts rather than simply following on with predictable products has already led to the creation of some innovative snacking concepts.
• Natural benefits: There is a marked trend for snacks to be marketed for their intrinsic, natural healthfulness. Use ingredients with a natural health halo and intrinsic health benefit.
• Think outside your category: In snacks you are not just competing in your own category e.g. bars; in the mind of consumers you are competing with every other category in the supermarket that they could use as a snack. Therefore innovating in packaging, merchandising, ingredients, formulation and delivery system are all essential to success.
Key Trend 7: Slow release energy – a new frontier
Worldwide, industry interest in claims focused on ‘slow-release’ or ‘sustained-release energy’ has increased sharply over the past two-to-three years – largely following the global success of Mondelez’s Belvita Breakfast Biscuits brand, with its message of “slow release energy” (or variants on that theme).
Belvita’s success has shown how strongly such a message resonates with consumers. ‘Energy’ is now well established as a claim that consumers love – unsurprisingly, when you consider that “energy” is consistently ranked among people’s top-5 health concerns, as global studies by Health Focus International have shown. However, for the past 25 years the energy message has been monopolised by the energy drinks sector, which offers a shot of caffeine-based instant energy in brands and formats whose appeal is primarily to consumers aged 15-25 (Key Trend 4).
Food and beverage manufacturers would love to emulate the success of the energy drinks – but with something that addresses the unmet need of sustained energy, has valid health credentials and appeals to other groups of consumers.
At fi rst sight the ‘slow-release’ formula offers a healthy message that can be mainstream but can also appeal to sub-groups who are concerned about diabetes or pre-diabetic status or about simply watching their weight. The challenge – and the opportunity – lies in the fact that consumers view the benefi t in a highly fragmented way. Different groups each have their own nuance.
To take just a few examples of possible messages: • Healthy blood sugar • Blood sugar control • Blood glucose control • Low glycemic index • Sustained energy • Slow energy release
Key points:
Sharp increase: Worldwide, industry interest in claims focused on ‘slow-release’ have increased sharply driven by the global success of pioneer Belvita Breakfast Biscuits brand.
• Still a niche: For all its growth, this category remains a niche – the claims are complex, and the consumer messaging is diffi cult to get right. Most consumers are thinking about their carbohydrate consumption, and how it affects their weight and their energy levels, but they don’t yet see themselves as in a disease state and they make their choices from “regular foods”.
• Choosing the right ingredients: Selecting ingredients to deliver the slow energy effect leads product developers to slowly digestible carbohydrates, of which oats and barley are well known, but there may also be opportunities for lesser grains such as sorghum and millet.
Key Trend 8: The demonisation of sugar
Reducing the levels of sugars in foods, and particularly added sugars, has long been a focus of responsible food and beverage companies.
And it’s in response to industry’s need for low- and no-calorie sweeteners that the sweeteners market has grown up over the past 40 years.
Beginning with aspartame, it has evolved increasingly towards sweeteners that meet consumers’ need for perceived naturalness, of which the most recent major development has been stevia.
However, the whole question of the sugar level of food and beverages is about to become much more important. Even investment bankers are now publicizing sugar as a major issue for the industry.
It is a moment when health advocates and the media are looking for a new demon and they have found it in sugar. The complexity of the sugar issue is actually reduced to very simple and misleading messages by many of the people involved, including the media. How is the food industry to react?
Key points:
Efforts to lower sugar: Some companies have already made significant advances in reducing sugar while keeping taste – and a few have been rewarded by consumers, such as Dean Foods’ TruMoo chocolate milk in the US market. Companies have taken a wealth of creative approaches to lowering sugar content.
• Sugar the new demon: However, the question of the sugar level of food and beverages is about to become much more important to industry. Some academic researchers have vigorously attacked sugar in the popular media with messages such as “sugar is poison” and “fructose is toxic” and they have placed responsibility firmly at the door of the food and beverage industry, to the delight of some journalists and health campaigners.
And as the demon of the past 20 years, saturated fat, starts to look less threatening, the media is looking for a new devil – it seems to have found it in sugar.
• Be prepared to act or you will get the blame: The food industry (singly or together) needs to act on the communications side and be willing to respond much more proactively to misleading stories and bad science that is even demonising fruit and leading some people to drop it from their diet.