“The landscape for prepared foods has been changing rapidly over the past decade, due largely to changes in consumer perception about the healthfulness, nutritional value, safety, and sustainability of prepared foods”. Prepared Foods Magazine, February 2019
The perception of consumers has changed dramatically over the past decade and has in-turn driven the food manufacturing industry, like a speeding semi in the fog, in many different directions. It’s a complicated relationship in which manufacturers and purchasers of food ingredients have had entire categories of ingredients removed from Approved Lists just because the name is too long. Even if derived from all-natural ingredients, just the sound of an ingredient like Xanthan Gum elicits a negative response from the new generation of consumers.
Consumer perception weighed against product reality.
As custom developers and manufacturers servicing industrial bakers (and their marketing departments!), it is incumbent upon us to have ready solutions to your regulatory concerns so you can respond to the latest consumer trends. As many artificial colorants have recently fallen out of favor, we are very well-positioned to formulate a variety of naturally-colored products. Do you need only natural colors to appear on your label but cannot find the right color product to satisfy the project? We can help! Unacceptable Ingredient Lists will continue to grow but Stewart Ingredient Systems will continue to be on the forefront of developing innovative products for the next unique generation of consumers.
Increasingly, consumers are motivated to reduce or eliminate sugar and/or consume alternate natural sweeteners.
Stewart Ingredient Systems, Inc. has been formulating solutions for smaller portions and higher flavor intensity to specifically combat the marketplace reaction over the past 5 plus years to smaller portions and better-for-you options in the grocery aisle. Our products can be found on the shelves today in GMO-Free, HFCS-Free and All-Natural snacking options.
Is your next Health and Wellness/Clean Label project in need of protein fortification? SIS has developed a complete line of plant based protein fortified fillings, toppings, variegates and fruit/vegetable dips with protein addition solely from plant based sources.
At Stewart Ingredients Systems, not only are we looking to produce and sell more product, we’re always looking to reduce inefficiencies and waste. A recent study highlighting the cost-savings that some companies are able to achieve confirms our thinking: “…a British-based food manufacturer achieved a more than 300-fold return on investment by running an audit that revealed seven percent of the food it bought remained in bulk containers after they were emptied.” (Umberto Bacchi/Thomson Reuters)
November is fast approaching and it’s the perfect time to roll-out seasonal offerings for consumers over the next three months. As a R&D house that manufactures all of our custom formulated items under one roof, SIS is perfectly positioned to accommodate any seasonal concepts and equipped to do so in a rapid fashion.
Can’t stay away from the discourse surrounding consumer’s demands for better-for-you snack offerings. The intersection of on-the-go consumers who demand better-for-you category of snacks often lands in convenience store aisles, and the data suggests that the C-store segment of the market is not shrinking anytime soon. In fact, convenience store sales increased more than 5% year-to-year from ’14 to ’15 with no expectations of that trend reversing course.
It may well be past time for ingredient declaration standards to be agreed-upon between manufacturers and consumers before the food industry becomes mired in lawsuits and wasted developments. For all of the push towards health and wellness trends—which consumers have now been demanding of the market for at least a decade—it does astound that the FDA has only this year asked for public comment on what the word “Natural” means on food labeling. In May of this year, the FDA opened the topic up for public comment and as of August 2016, more than 5,000 comments have been filed in response. Now, recall again how long consumers had to wait for the Nutrition Labeling changes to be implemented into the marketplace? If the designation of what constitutes “Natural” on our food labeling takes nearly as much time, it is fair to assume that resource spend within industry by those protecting themselves from lawsuit will dwarf the spend associated with Nutrition Label changes.