IFT First 2025: Cargill talks bridging macro consumer trends with product development

Leveraging its legacy proprietary research tools, US food corporation Cargill highlights how its consumer insights support manufacturers in navigating shifting demands, cost pressures, and product innovation at IFT First 2025 in Chicago, US, which concluded yesterday. 

Food Ingredients First sits down with Keith Albright, senior consumer insights manager for the North America team at Cargill, to understand how data collection and category-level insights are influencing formulation and helping identify gaps in the market.

Cargill’s approach is based on identifying broad trends as signals, which it then analyzes in relation to F&B categories, formats, and functionality.

“We’ve done IngredienTracker for 11 years and Fattitudes — where we look at fats and oils within different channels and categories — for 13 years. But I want to pull back a little bit and start with trends. We look at trends as signals. That allows us to shift to meet consumers where they are. Then we move into food and beverage trends,” Albright explains.

“Before we even get into chains, channels, categories, we look at categories or products like turkey, beef, C-stores, sweeteners, and we double-click into the broad, high-level aspects of those foods, and then we get into the categories.”

This method allows the company to respond to changes in consumer preferences by allocating resources with potential for growth or reformulation.

Albright, whose focus is on bakery and confectionery, adds that trend signals are used to identify gaps that can be addressed through product development.

“The category information is handy for developing growth strategies with our customers. Understanding where your needs are helps us meet our customers at the table before we jump into the sandbox and start ideating and brainstorming on solutions that meet consumer needs.”

Influencing reformulation

Albright points out that Cargill’s insights model helps customers address many factors influencing reformulation. These include cost and supply concerns, regulatory changes, and consumer perceptions shaped by healthcare or peer advice.

“Influencing reformulations is key with everything coming at our customers at various breakneck speeds, whether it’s cost of goods sold (COGS) challenges, regulatory, what people are hearing socially from their neighbors, primary care providers.”

Keith Albright, senior consumer insights manager for the North America team at Cargill.He adds that without ingredient expertise and analysis on trends and signals, much of the time would be spent answering operational questions.

“We would be bogged down with questions, and just answering what I would say would be less strategic. They must be addressed, but they may not drive that long-term sustainable growth.”

For example, Albright points out how consumer motivations around indulgence are evolving in the bakery segment.

“With sweet baked goods, we know it’s about joy, indulgence, or that treat or reward. When you focus on that and then you need to deliver those table stakes, you quickly realize that this whole concept of ‘avoiding’ looks very different in a category like sweet baked goods. It starts to look like portion control. It starts to look like, ‘when I indulge, I go all in.’”

“So nuances come to bear in different categories, forcing us to deliver on those consumer demands quite differently, category by category.”

Changing narratives

Albright notices a shift in the way consumers are framing health-forward eating. While mindful eating continues to be a prominent macro trend, it is increasingly linked to healthy aging and long-term wellness concepts.

“Last year, we discussed mindful eating a lot, and it’s still prevalent. But the nuance in mindful eating is that healthy aging is still the motivator.”

“I like the term ‘healthspan,’ where the focus is not on lifespan but health. It automatically puts you in a proactive, not preventative, but more of an ‘I know what I need to do, and therefore I’m going to do it’ approach. And if you approach it that way, you can put it on the table.”

He believes the mindset of constant adjustment is also shaping the future of food.

“I also like the analogy and the visual of a teeter-totter. The intention is that it is not supposed to balance. That articulates a visual that the consumer is going through this teeter totter of balancing what they need to avoid and what they should seek. That’s the nuance coming into play this year with the avoidance [of certain foods].”

“There’s a lot of noise about what you should eat less. But there’s also this need of ‘what I need more of,’ so there is that constant balance. I’m watching that teeter-totter effect closely,” he concludes.