Ingredion webinar preview: Building better nutrition without compromising the eating experience

Consumers increasingly want foods and beverages to deliver more nutritional benefits without sacrificing the eating experience. Demand for protein, fiber, and sugar reduction is raising the bar for formulators, who must balance these benefits with expectations around taste, texture, convenience, and value, according to Ingredion.

The ingredient supplier’s upcoming webinar, “Delivering More from Every Bite,” will explore how shifting consumer expectations are influencing F&B development and how formulators can build better nutritional outcomes while managing the technical trade-offs that come with reformulation.

Ahead of the session, Food Ingredients First speaks with Ingredion’s expert speakers, Joana Maricato, manager, global insights research, and Hazel Fromm-Tatosian, senior director, global food applications. They discuss consumer willingness to compromise, how to combine multiple nutritional benefits, and why improving a product’s nutritional profile requires formulators to consider the entire food matrix.

You can register for the webinar for free here. It will be broadcast on November 4, 2026, at 09:00 CET and 16:00 CET.

More nutrition, same sensory expectations

For manufacturers, the push toward positive nutrition is increasingly about adding benefits without making consumers feel they have lost something elsewhere in the product.

Maricato says Ingredion’s research highlights that consumers may accept certain sensory changes in return for a nutritional benefit, but that tolerance has clear limits.

Ingredion’s research found that 80% of consumers would accept a denser texture in a product with at least 30 g of protein, but only 41% would accept a drier texture.“Consumers increasingly expect nutritional improvements without feeling like they are giving something up. They may want more protein or fiber and less sugar, but they want to have those benefits alongside a taste and texture they enjoy, in a convenient product with good value.”

“Our research shows where consumers are willing to make trade-offs and where they are not. For example, about 80% of consumers globally say they would accept a denser texture in a product delivering at least 30 grams of protein per unit, but only 41% would accept a drier texture for higher protein. That distinction is important because it tells formulators that improving nutrition doesn’t give us permission to compromise the entire eating experience.”

The findings underline that nutritional reformulation is not simply a matter of maximizing protein or fiber content. Instead, formulators need to identify which sensory attributes consumers are prepared to compromise on and which remain essential to product acceptance.

Matching benefits to eating occasions

At the same time, consumers are increasingly looking for products that can deliver several benefits at once. But rather than adding as many nutritional claims as possible, Maricato says manufacturers should consider the specific consumer need and eating occasion they are targeting.

“One of the biggest opportunities is to stop thinking about benefits in isolation and instead start with the need or occasion the product is designed to serve.”

“In the webinar, we use a protein bar to show how that can vary. For someone living an active lifestyle, protein, energy, and satisfaction may be important. For a snacking occasion focusing on everyday wellness, fiber, balance, and digestive wellness may become more relevant. Other occasions may place greater emphasis on reduced sugar, satiety, or even permission to indulge. The opportunity is to identify which combination is meaningful for a particular consumer and occasion rather than simply trying to maximize every nutritional attribute at once.”

This approach also has implications for product development, as combining several nutritional targets can have ripple effects across texture, flavor, shelf life, and processing.

Rebalancing the whole formulation

Fromm-Tatosian says these interactions become particularly evident when manufacturers attempt to increase protein and fiber while simultaneously reducing sugar.

“The biggest challenge is that improving nutritional benefits doesn’t happen in isolation. In a protein bar, increasing protein can affect flavor, firmness, grittiness, and how the product changes over shelf life. Fiber can influence water binding, cohesiveness, mouthfeel, and perceived freshness. Reducing sugar introduces another set of considerations because sugar contributes not only sweetness, but also body, binding, structure, and moisture management.”The company stresses that successful reformulation requires protein, fiber, sugar, taste, and texture to be considered together.

The webinar will demonstrate these challenges through a protein bar renovation, looking beyond individual ingredients to consider how different components interact across the finished product.

“During the webinar, we’ll walk through a protein bar renovation that increases protein and fiber as primary benefits, while also reducing sugar. Instead of treating those as three separate formulation tasks, we’ll look at the entire matrix, including the core, inclusions, and chocolate compound, and how those elements can be rebalanced through an iterative process to protect the desired eating experience.”

“The goal is to deliver a product experience that meets consumer expectations while hitting on the nutritional targets.”

Designing the whole bite

This systems-based approach also challenges the assumption that a healthier formulation can be achieved simply by adding a beneficial ingredient or removing an ingredient consumers may wish to limit.

“One assumption we’ll challenge is that reformulation is simply a matter of adding a beneficial nutrient or taking something like sugar out. In reality, changing one part of the formula can create tradeoffs throughout the product. That’s why we advocate setting the consumer and product guardrails first, then iterating against them as the formula evolves.”

For R&D teams, that means defining the nutritional and sensory objectives before formulation begins and then evaluating how the product performs as a whole, rather than optimizing each nutritional attribute separately.

“The practical takeaway is to design the whole bite. Start by defining what consumers already value and what needs to be protected, formulate protein, fiber, sugar, texture, and taste together, and then validate not just the nutritional improvement but the product experience and process performance over time.”

Overall, Ingredion’s message is that successful nutrition reformulation depends on balancing nutritional gains with the sensory qualities consumers value. By treating protein, fiber, sugar, texture, and taste as interconnected parts of the same formulation challenge, manufacturers can develop products that deliver stronger nutritional benefits without undermining consumer acceptance.