Health is the Future of Food & Beverage

Wellness is the key trend

The trend towards health cannot be doubted and health – or wellness – is becoming the new standard for the food industry.

Foods and beverages with health benefits can no longer be viewed as some special separate category – every product must have some positive nutritional values.

Wellness is the key trend and every company must have a clear view of how “wellness” is going to impact its products and how it will do business in a world in which wellness is the norm.

All Foods are fast Becoming Functional

Marketing the intrinsic healthfulness of the foods your company already produces. The role of the food industry in improving the health of society – and specifically its role in contributing to, and helping to remedy, the epidemic of obesity and other diet-related diseases – is the subject of stormy debate.

Individualized Nutrition

BASF, one of the world’s leading ingredient companies, and Fonterra, one of the world’s biggest dairy groups, were to jointly fund a multi-million dollar research program, called POSIFoods (Point Of Sale Individualised Foods) to create a system that will allow customers to choose a snack that meets particular health needs such as low-fat for calorie management, low cholesterol for heart-health, high calcium for osteoporosis, or low in sugars for diabetics.

In recent years, the trend to individual consumption has helped drive the rapid growth of nutritional bars and beverages. If you look at where the big growth in nutritional products has been over the last few years it’s in bars and single-serve beverages – products consumed by individuals who are on-the-go, in a hurry, and most often eating alone.

Asia for inspiration and health leadership

It’s worth reminding ourselves that the origins of many of the most successful functional brands and functional product concepts lay in Asia, and in particular Japan. Probiotic dairy drinks, energy drinks, enhanced waters – these have all been long established in Asia.

Red Bull, for example, was on the market in Thailand for many years before an Austrian company licensed the concept. And soy may seem like a high-growth wonder-food in the west but it has for centuries been part of the Asian diet.

The Kids Nutrition Crisis

The issue of what products the food and beverage industries market to children – and how they are marketed – has risen up the agenda of industry, parents and governments alike over the past two years and there’s every sign that the debate around the subject will intensify and the pressure to produce healthier options will only increase.

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The Centre for Food & Health Studies, an international organization based in the UK that provides research, analysis and forecasting of the global nutrition business.

Copies of the Ten Key Trends for the Functional Food Industry are available for a fee. For more information visit http://www.new-nutrition.com/ or email julian.mellentin@new-nutrition.com or call +44 (0) 207 533 6595.