KEY INTERVIEW: Trend Driven Taste and Nutrition Development

19 Dec 2016 --- Kerry is increasingly positioning itself around taste and nutrition, aligning to changes in the marketplace. The company now employs some 23,000 staff [of whom 800 are scientists], embedded in six continents, with revenues of €6.1 billion in 2015 and sales to over 140 countries worldwide. FoodIngredientsFirst spoke with Dr. Satya Jonnalagadda, Kerry’s Director of Global Nutrition about some of the key trends to watch in 2017 and beyond, including clean label, sugar reduction and alternative proteins.

For Jonnalagadda, a key trend driving the food and beverage industry forward is that consumers are taking a more proactive, self-accountable approach to their overall health & wellness. “They are smarter, more skeptical, and much more selective than previously seen, which is causing consumers to pay more attention to nutritional ingredients in their foods and beverages,” she notes. 

Overall, this shift in consumer’s attitudes is putting greater pressure on food and beverage manufacturers to align their product offerings with consumer interests and values. “Because the definition of being healthy is now a more holistic concept, being more balanced, such as products with fewer ingredients, artificial flavors, and preservatives, will play an important role in product development and consumer acceptance,” she notes. For Jonnalagadda, we will also see greater demand for food – and particularly in nutritional beverages. These are products that provide tailored nutrition, incorporate ingredients with a healthy halo or nutritional functional benefit, or positioned as: “good for you/better for you.” 

There is strong confusion in existence around what “clean label” means, which can often leave product manufacturers scrambling to create or redefine their products in a way that meets consumer sentiment. Where Kerry can add value is by partnering with customers to interpret what is important to their target consumer. “We help our customers find solutions that are closer to nature in order to deliver on clean label initiatives. For consumers that want natural products with health benefits that may mean replacing ingredients with clean label alternatives that still retain a product’s key functionality, taste or nutritional profile,” she says. “Or it may mean using technologies that reduce specific ingredients and simplify a product’s ingredient deck. We also help our customers look for creative ways to reposition products in the marketplace by aligning with innovative clean label market opportunities,” Jonnalagadda notes.

In a market where products that meet the needs of a more proactive, health & wellness consumer win market share, Kerry is focused on creating solutions for customers that look not only at product innovation. They also help food and beverage manufacturers anticipate and respond to evolving consumer attitudes, trends and behaviors. “We are focused on meeting consumers where they are with their own health and wellness journey. Whether it is formulating with cleaner, natural solutions or with nutritional functional benefits such as immune health, we are helping companies create products that are better for the consumer,” she says.

Jonnalagadda stresses that taste is the number one consumer driver, but that delivering this taste requires a deep level of expertise from the application and formulation side. “Consumers are not only looking for products that taste good, but that are also made from trusted, authentic, and wholesome foods and flavors,” she explains. “In the nutritional beverage space, where consumers are seeking products with a feel good factor, we see a trend towards delivering invigorating, revitalizing and refreshing tastes. So for example, we use our fruit and vegetable crystals to deliver fruit flavors that are growing in popularity,” she adds. 

Sugar reduction and reformulation is also strongly on the radar and provides both a challenge and an opportunity to . “While we are not a producer of sweeteners, we do understand the implications that sugar & sweeteners can have within a formulation from a taste and nutrition perspective. For example, removing or reducing sugar can impact not only the sweetness level but also the mouthfeel, balance and overall taste of a foods and beverages,” she notes. 

Kerry has developed a portfolio of taste solutions to address these issues called TasteSense. Another challenge that TasteSense solves for is the masking of functional and better for you ingredients that tend to have off notes such as protein, whole grains, fiber, vitamins, minerals etc. “Our flavorists and applications scientists have the expertise to help our customers tailor the right solution to meet their consumer’s demands for reduced sugar and the addition of more functional ingredients,” she notes. 

Again, with consumers taking a new, more proactive approach to their health, manufacturers and retailers need to provide solutions that meet the shifting requirements and preferences of the consumer. Plant protein is an example of just that, with the strong market growth for alternative proteins being reflective of the changing dietary demands of consumers, who are taking more control over their diets by seeking the health benefits of a plant based products. “Because plant proteins are playing an increasingly important role in a range of food and beverage products such as sports drinks and nutrition and energy bars, we are looking for protein solutions that can help our customers meet this growing demand,” she concludes.

By Robin Wyers