Better-for-you snack and bakery product development strategies

There was a time, not so long ago, when nutritional boundaries were more clear-cut. “Indulgent foods weren’t healthy,” says Mel Festejo, COO, American Key Food Products, Closter, NJ. “They either had a surfeit of nutrients that triggered health issues, or they contained ingredients whose names raised anxiety.”

Yet consumers ate them anyway, seeing as how they satisfied humankind’s most fundamental cravings. Within the last couple decades, however, nutrition’s forward march—not to mention social media’s influence—combined to promote better health through informed food choices, Festejo continues. And consumers began viewing their guilty indulgences with warier eyes.

But “delicious” exerts a pull that’s hard to resist, so consumers faced a quandary: how to do right by their health while still enjoying the “gustatory and sometimes emotional experiences that make them want to indulge in the first place,” Festejo says.

Luckily, the food industry—and snack and bakery in particular—felt their pain, responding with products that strike what Festejo calls “the delicate balance of ‘healthy indulgence,’ rather than forcing a choice of one at the expense of the other.”

Though it’s a tricky balance to strike, we’re getting better at this “better-for-you” snack and bakery balance every year.

Read the full article here.