FORMULATING FOODS: Considerations for Ingredient Positioning

FORMULATING FOODS

Formulating Foods explores the latest health and nutrition news and research—as well as the latest ingredient and food application innovations—to determine what consumers want (and need) from the food and beverage products they consume, and how industry can make it happen. 

Considerations for Ingredient Positioning

Rachel Adams

August 25, 2014 - Blog

Print

• E-Mail
• in

Creating food and beverage products with healthful ingredients won’t do much good if consumers are unaware of the benefits such products (ingredients) provide. Enter marketing. However, public relations is a fundamental cornerstone of the marketing mix and can greatly aid in successful product development and positioning.

According to an article in the August issue of The Boardroom Journal, “Public Relations: A Cornerstone in Ingredient Positioning," by Ian Newton, managing director, CERES Consulting, PR should be an integral part of the product launch plan, and should be included from the very beginning of any business development plan through to the launching of the new ingredient or product.

Even during the development of the science and regulatory strategy, PR should have its place at the table. PR persons can provide input and direction in planning and can find ways to maximize the full scientific benefits accruing to the product or those benefits expected to be gained during product development and regulatory timelines.

Newton points to some key questions that can help to develop successful PR strategies, including: where do audiences obtain information?; which messages are effective?; and what prompts behavior change?
Research shows nutrition information sources generally include friends and family, health care professionals, health concerns and government agencies. And the information consumers are looking for is about diet and nutrition, pharmaceuticals, online health newsletters and women’s health.

And so, what are the most effective messages? Effective messages are relevant, credible and actionable; and the most credible sources tend to be physicians, dietitians, pharmacists, nurses and health newsletters.

Based on this information, companies can start to make PR a strategic choice in media planning, which may not be simple as there are different strategies to consider that can provide different resonance with an audience. For example, advertising will allow companies a great deal of control, but may not be considered credible. Whereas PR won’t allow the same amount of control in messaging, but can be very credible.

Ultimately, PR provides depth, credibility and a balanced approach, usually with science-backed information that can set the stage for marketers to launch products or foods containing active ingredients that have health benefits that answer consumers’ needs.

For a closer look at PR and its role in ingredient positions—as well as the state of investment in the nutrition industry—download the latest issue of the Boardroom Journal, “Venture Capital: The Highway to Strategic Investment."

INNOVATION: What’s Inside Matters

What’s Inside Matters

Judie Bizzozero

May 20, 2014 - Blogs

Print

• E-Mail
• ins

Last week the International Food Information Council Foundation (IFIC) released its 2014 IFIC Foundation Food & Health Survey that provides insights from Americans on important food safety, nutrition and health-related topics. The 9^th annual survey examined how Americans view their own diets, their efforts to improve them, how they balance diet and exercise, their knowledge of food ingredients and components, their beliefs when it comes to food safety, and their behaviors across all of these fronts.

One of the most important findings was while taste and price consistently have been the top two factors that impact consumers’ food and beverage purchases, healthfulness in 2014 almost entirely closed the gap with price, rising from 61 percent of consumers in 2012 to 71 percent in 2014. In fact, consumers aged 18 to 34 years, who cite healthfulness as a driver of food and beverage purchases, increased from 55 percent in 2013 to 66 percent in 2014, significantly narrowing the gap with other age groups.

As consumers increasingly seek products that are healthy, safe, effective and sustainable, food and beverage formulators and marketers are charged with the task to differentiate their products and it all begins with ingredients. Yet, finding the latest information about new ingredients and their applications can be daunting. But we have the solution.

Ingredient Marketplace will take place June 2-3 in New York City and connects ingredient buyers and sellers to streamline the process for finding new ingredients and launching products. The food and beverage participation at the show continues to grow; from 2012 to 2013 there was an 89 percent increase in food and beverage individuals in attendance.

This year’s featured speaker is Gregory Jaffe, director, biotechnology project, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), who will present “Biotechnology and the Future of the Ingredient Supply Chain." (Check out an exclusive preview of his presentation here.)

Taking place right in the Expo Hall, you will find the Ingredient Marketplace Trends In stage that delivers critical market information across nine hot ingredient categories. These 30-minute “Trends In …" presentations spotlight hot ingredient categories like Trends In Proteins, Trends In Sweeteners, Trends In Probiotics, Trends In Omega-3s, Trends in Antioxidants and more. These presentations will help formulators and marketers that are looking for ways to differentiate their products.

Also taking place at the Trends In stage is a new Ingredients IQ, an interactive, Jeopardy-style game that tests the knowledge of our industry professionals. This fun event is a must-see for attendees.

And finally, we know searching for the next innovative ingredient can be exhausting, so stop by the Drinks On Us Reception on the Expo Hall floor sponsored by Rochem International. It’s a great way to network with other attendees and, even better, it is included in the Marketplace Pass.

We hope to see you in the Big Apple next month. And remember, What’s Inside Matters when it comes to consumers’ food and beverage choices.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: Seeing the Light: Holographic Chocolate

Seeing the Light: Holographic Chocolate

Lynn Kuntz

May 15, 2014 - Blogs

Print

• E-Mail
• ins

Every once in a while I see some technology that stops me cold and makes me mentally exclaim: “Wow!" This week—and it may take top prize for the year—is holographic chocolates that depend on nothing more than chocolate, molding technology and the properties of light.

Really, how cool is that?

My knowledge of the properties of light pretty much starts and ends with using refractometers to measure soluble solids and admiring the effects of crystals, prisms and raindrops. So instead of fumbling the physics, I’ll let Veronica Savu, CEO of Morphotonix, the Swiss company that invented the holographic chocolate technology describe it:
“The effect is light diffraction, just like you see on a CD in the sun," Savu explained. “It is due to the fact that the surface of the material (in this case chocolate) has a controlled roughness at the micrometer scale. This comes from molding the chocolate into molds with controlled roughness. This controlled roughness could be for example grooves between 1 to 10 micrometers wide. Although the grain size of chocolate is between 20 to 30 micrometers, it still molds inside these grooves pretty well, depending on the chocolate and processing. So we do not use printing, it is pure standard chocolate molding into molds which have very small features. What we do is actually making these features into the metallic mastermold form which the plastic molds are replicated… The effect is similar to the effect on the wings of a morpho butterfly, which is due not only to pigment, but to the shape of the wings at the microscale."

So I asked Savu: Why chocolate? Besides the Swiss connection and all? Not only is chocolate delicious, apparently it just happens to possess the right qualities, she said: “The processing (molding) does not involve anything new or different from the standard. It could be used on other foods, as long as the grain size lends itself to molding in such small grooves."

There you have it, the intersection of food science and physics—or what happens when engineers play with their food. And it’s a fine example of the complexity that is food science.

Then she posed a question to me—what other foods could work given those parameters? She suggested tofu, I thought perhaps cheese or a molded gelatin or some other sort of hydrocolloid. Other types of candy, maybe some sort of confectionery flake?  An edible film that might replace those annoying stickers on fresh product? (Remember patent lawyers; you heard it here first.) Frozen foods would probably work, but melt too quickly to be practical. I hear open innovation is quite the thing these days. So here’s a puzzle for all the food scientists that deal with the microstructure of foods: What foods might fit the particle size constraints, mold cleanly and maintain the proper shape?

Not that I’m geeking out or anything…but seriously, how cool is this?