Food manufactures add sugar to their products to make them taste good. Have you ever tried a biscuit without sugar? It is bland and tasteless. A product like chocolate is too bitter and almost inedible when sugar is absent. Sweetness is required, in some form and amount, to help make our food palatable.

Food labelling laws require manufacturers to clearly list all ingredients and display a nutrition panel – including % daily intake for sugars. The sugar content of some products is surprising, but nothing is hidden and nothing is secret.

Consumers need to be better educated on how to understand nutrition panels, make good food choices, and avoid over eating. Research has shown that when consumers are informed about the nutritional content of food, they make healthier choices.

Dr Robert McBride, my mentor and expert in consumer behaviour and sensory psychology, was asked on the program if we should be giving up sugar, his answer was “No, absolutely not. It’s one of the pleasures of life. We need these pleasures”.

It is this pleasure we get from eating great tasting food that helps us decide which brands we buy and which ones we avoid. A food product must taste good for us to consider buying it again and for it to succeed in the market place.

In the last few years consumers have been demanding foods with less sugar and/or alternative natural sweeteners (eg stevia, honey, rice malt syrup, maple syrup, coconut sugar, agave nectar etc).  Many big food manufacturers are responding with new products or reformulations, and new players are entering the market.

Food manufacturers need to be cautious with how they address this trend. When a well-liked product is tampered with and replaced with an inferior tasting offering, it is only a matter of days before consumers start venting on Twitter or Facebook. Take Coca Cola’s Vitaminwater in the US as an example. It had long been criticised as being too high in sugar, so last year Coca Cola decided to reduce the sugar and reformulate. Within days of the new formulation hitting the shelves, loyal users wrote comments on the Vitaminwater Facebook page like “The new taste is nasty. You just lost a customer. I can’t drink it now.” Coca Cola went in to damage control and were eventually forced to return to the original formula.

So how do food manufactures avoid costly mistakes like Vitaminwater in the US? They need to start with a good strategy. They must first determine if they can reformulate the existing product and achieve a near identical sensory profile to the current offering. It is critical that this is properly researched with regular users of the product to ensure that alienation wouldn’t occur and sales would continue. If it is not possible to produce a near identical product, then a separate new reduced sugar variant would need to be introduced. This new variant must also be acceptable to the target market, otherwise it will fail to take off. After learning important lessons, Coca Cola released a new reduced sugar variant a few months ago – Coke Life. This time they got the taste right.

I think it’s fair to say that when consumed in moderation, sugar is a harmless addition to most people’s diet. Better nutrition education is required to help make informed choices and tackle its overconsumption. As consumers, we should be able to continue to buy the products we love and enjoy and make our own decisions. Food manufacturers should continue to work on reduced sugar offerings, but they need to be diligent with any changes they make to their current product formulations.

The post Sugar. Is it Really the “Dietary Villain of Our Time” and What are Food Manufacturers to Do? appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.

Dewi Suryani of the flavour and fragrance company Firmenich, says that the main barriers for some manufactures are:

• cost – natural colours and flavours are typically more expensive and
• limited options – there is a smaller range for natural, although this is growing

From a technical prospective there are also some other factors to consider, most of which are continually improving, such as:

• colour vibrancy – natural colours tend not to be as bright
• heat and light stability – natural colours and flavours tend to be less stable when heated or exposed to light
• pH – some natural colours are only suitable to use in products with certain pH levels.

While there may be some challenges when going ‘natural’, when done well, the change is a positive one.  Many products in the supermarket proudly display their ‘No Artificial Colours or Flavours’ statement on the front of their packs.  Here are a few stories of those who have gone natural.

In 1992, Binkas ‘The Natural Confectionary Company’ range of products was launched.  They contained no artificial colours or flavours and mums felt less guilty about buying lollies for their children. By 2003, they had become the most popular jelly lollies on the Australian market and were bought by Cadbury Schwepps (now Mondelez). (image from Mondelez International)

In December 2008, Nestle Australia agreed to produce their Smarties with natural colours after 2 ½ years of requests from parent activists and anti-food additive lobbyists to follow in the steps of the UK company.  A statement from Nestle at the time said that it had taken 12 months of R&D work to get the reformulation right and maintain the taste and appearance of their iconic product. (image from Nestle Australia)

Some products are more difficult or impossible to reformulate.  Take Jelly Belly jelly beans for example; these tiny little bursts of flavour are known for their exotic offerings such as buttered popcorn and chocolate pudding.  These taste sensations make them unique and is a strong selling point, however, the flavours are synthetic.  Jelly Belly knew that they had to win back consumers who were avoiding artificial additives, but wanted to ensure that they didn’t alienate loyal users.  They made a clever decision to introduce a new range in 2007 in the UK – BeNatural Jelly Belly’s.  (image from Jelly Belly UK)

There is no denying that the demand for natural ingredients is here to stay, and food and beverage manufacturers need to be strategic with how they go about providing this for consumers.  If it’s a direct swap from artificial to natural colours and/or flavours then the new formulation must deliver a similar sensory profile to the existing product.  The new formulation should be tested with regular users of the product to ensure acceptance and continued sales.

The post Consumers are Demanding Natural Colours & Flavours. So Why are Some FMCG Manufacturers Hesitating to Change? appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.