Responsible indulgence

More than ever, consumers pay attention to what they eat. The trend of healthy food was set-in long before anyone had heard of Covid-19, but the pandemic worked as a global accelerator for this trend and it has caused some interesting shifts in the health expectations of consumers. Research by Puratos among over 7500 consumers in 15 countries shows that 60% of consumers now turn to food to strengthen their health. Meanwhile, indulgence and taste remained key to consumers and, amid the uncertainty created by the pandemic people consumed sweet and indulgent products as a tool to cope and a “feeling down” remedy.

Consumers are looking for ways to embrace a right balanced diet, where there is still  space for permissible indulgence and comfort food. However, that approach changes when the focus move toward their children diet. During our Cake tomorrow survey*, 67%* of shoppers mentioned that they  make different purchasing choices depending to who they buy for: themselves or their children. Specifically, when they buy for their children, They pay much more attention to the HEALTH aspect. Parents-millennials want their children to establish a responsible relationship with food and to learn what is good for them. For this reason they look for products that are healthy, but that kids can also enjoy!

To guide shoppers in finding healthier alternatives, front of pack labeling are popping up everywhere. One of them, very well known in Europe, is the Nutri-Score.

This tool is very useful to compare finished product within the same category. 

Based on the finished good composition, each product gets negative or positive points, the points are then added up and the results is visualized with a letter on a scale from A (best) to E (worst).

Ingredients influencing positively the scoring are : fruits, vegetables, pulses, nuts, some oils with good nutritional profile such as olive or canola, fibers and proteins.

Ingredients and nutritional aspects influencing negatively the scoring: Sugar, saturated fat, salt and overall calories content.

Currently, In the packed snack cake category, most of the products carries a Nutriscore of D or E.

However, we believe we could do better and we challenged our Technical advisor to create Nutriscore C snack cakes, that are as appealing to the children as the D/E reference.

How did we achieve this? We decrease negative components like sugar and fat and we increase the presence of positive ingredients like fibers without any compromise in taste and texture

Our hero products:

• ACTI sugar replacer: Modular ingredient to be used as a 1 to 1 replacer of sugar in your cake batter.
• Belcolade Milk Cacao trace sugar reduced: the guarantee of the all-time delicious Real Belgian milk chocolate taste, while 40% sugar reduced.
• Cremfil ultim milk Sugar sugar reduced: Cremfil Ultim: a range of chocolate and nuts fillings  that help to reduce the fat and sugar content of your long shelflife soft goods.
• Vivavil strawberry sugar reduced: 30% sugar reduced while maintaining ultimate strawberry taste and excellent performance for your baked goods creation.