Sweet as sugar

Children in Scotland are eating too much sugar, the Foods Standards Agency reported recently - yet another sign that something has to be done to improve the UK's eating habits.

Innovation experts gathered in Warwickshire on March 27 at Food Manufacture​'s new product development (NPD) round table, sponsored by ingredients firms Roquette and Lipid Nutrition, to discuss what action needed to be taken.

"At what point do children have enough information to make informed choices?" asked Cargill category innovation manager Claire Murphy. "It's well before they get to the dieting stage that we need to start educating consumers about the consequences of the food they eat."

For many children, health was not a top priority when it came to making food choices, claimed Keith Batcheler, confectionery applications technologist for International Flavors and Fragrances. "We did some research on children's choices of breakfast cereal and, with about 20% of them, their actual choice wasn't anything to do with nutrition, but rather the cartoons associated with the cereal. It's pointless trying to sell kids a wonderful product with half the calories and tons of fibre - unless it's the right cartoon, it's not going to sell."

Food Manufacture editor Rick Pendrous also felt that young people often had other interests besides health when it came to eating. "My daughter is well educated and still eats a load of rubbish!" It's not about healthy and unhealthy foods, but rather educating people on how to balance their diets, he claimed. Batcheler agreed: "The way forward has got to be education."

Retailers, such as Asda, are already taking a lead in this area. Its new Connecting Children scheme, piloted at Whiston Junior and Infant school in March, helps to educate children about farming, its importance to life in Britain and the benefits of using fresh ingredients as part of a healthy balanced diet.

Whiston pupils (pictured above) spent a day learning about British farming and healthy eating through a series of hands-on activities.

Thoughts on reformulation

Even with consumer education improving, the round table delegates accepted that they still had a responsibility to make existing products healthier. This was an area where processors had to tread carefully to reach a balance between taste and nutrition.

This was a particular concern for manufacturers of soft drinks aimed at children, said Vimto Soft Drinks development technologist Beckie Thirsk. "On the one hand you have health and on the other we need to make money."

Martin Tatlock, business development manager at Roquette, suggested that in certain products, sugar could be replaced by sweeteners in order to make the products healthier. He felt that breakfast cereals were in need of such attention because many of them were too high in sugar.

"Consumers are really concerned about sugar in breakfast cereals and cereal bars, because they feel that these products should be healthy. The industry needs to look at that," he claimed. "It may be more expensive [to use sweeteners], but you'll come up with something that tastes as good."

However, he noted that finding a sweetener that could replicate the function of sugar was more challenging. "We had a sugar reduction project with Leatherhead Food International (LFI) and found that cereal without sugar doesn't work because when you add milk it's a slimy horrible mess."

In contrast, Murphy was not convinced that sweeteners were the right way forward. She conceded that the use of artificial sweeteners was partly to blame for the average consumer's sweet tooth.

"I have a real bug bear about when we reduce salt, fat and sugar, because we tend to overcompensate by adding an overage in. So when people go back to a natural product after eating or drinking our products, they need more sweetness. We're brainwashing people into wanting more sweet, salt and fat in their foods, which is a dangerous thing."

A future for fortification

Of course, taking ingredients out of a product in order to make it healthier isn't the only option. The developers also discussed the option of fortifying products with healthy ingredients.

With any new ingredient, there was bound to be a learning curve, said Lipid Nutrition's global marketing manager John Kurstjens. "Education is particularly important when you've got a new ingredient and it also requires a lot of marketing investment, both with manufacturers and also with the end consumer."

Adding a new ingredient to a familiar product was a good way of introducing consumers to new, healthier options, without scaring them, agreed delegates.

"You'll never sell something like a brand new tropical fruit cereal to a kid," warned Batcheler. "But you might be able to add tropical fruit to a [familiar] cereal. Kids aren't going to go into the health section of a retailer, but let's make what they do eat healthier," he said. "Why don't products that are acceptable to kids, such as Mars bars contain 30% fibre?"

Food technologist and founding partner at consultancy Booth Smith Food Technology Brian Smith accepted that 'added fibre' was a meaningful message for consumers, though he questioned whether there would be a clampdown on what could be classed as fibre. "As far as polysaccharides, inulin and pectins go, is the government going to get more picky about what we can claim as fibre?"

Tatlock was confident that this wasn't the case. "Using fibre will become simpler. The UK industry has been in the dark ages with fibre, but that is now changing and it is getting easier to add fibre into foods," he said.

Murphy flagged up that there were still fears around using too much fibre in food products. "As developers you're always bound by the laxative effects of certain fibres. There's an educational message to be given to consumers. If we want our products to be successful, then we can't have them having to go to the loo every five minutes!"

If people got the message that fibre was good for them, were they likely to go over-the-top with it and suffer negative side effects? questioned Leatherhead Food International head of food innovation Alice Pegg, who chaired the event.

Tatlock dismissed such worries, stating that there was no chance of people overdosing on fibre through eating fortified products. He claimed that juice drinks were frequently fortified with calcium, without any side-effects, so adding a little fibre to a drink would be just as acceptable.

Fortifying a product to make it healthier is only half the battle, however. Manufacturers also have their work cut out for them ensuring that it reaches target consumers.

"We've been talking to various firms about adding trace elements, such as selenium, to their products," said Andrew Stancey, business development executive at nanotechnology company Eminate. "But we found that the people who would really benefit from such ingredients aren't the primary market."

He explained that early users of such food products would pay a lot of money for them, but these consumers weren't actually in need of extra vitamins.

He asked whether personalised nutrition might be a way of homing in on particular consumer groups. "We have a list of claims that we can use, but do we focus on specific target markets, such as calcium-fortified products for young girls, or do we just spread the general message of health?"

There was no universal agreement on whether to personalise food products, or use a broad brush to get across the importance of a balanced diet.

However, all delegates at the round table event willingly accepted that there was plenty of work yet to be done in the field of healthier NPD and that by working together, industry could come up with the most practical way forward.

"It's difficult for one company to make a change on its own because of competition," said Thirsk. "That's why the whole industry needs to back the issue and find solutions together." FM