Understanding which consumer trends will be the most important - and which strategies you can use to create success for your business - is a super-power for food industry executives. This unique report is written to enable you and your colleagues to develop this super-power.
For each trend, all the important points of strategy are clearly signposted so that you and your colleagues can use this report as a focus for discussions about:
- what the trends mean for your business
- what you can do now
- what you must be planning for tomorrow
To help you figure out your strategy and NPD plans, 10 Key Trends sets out:
- The 10 most important growth trends in nutrition & health.
- The consumer, market, and science drivers for each trend.
- The direction of travel for each trend.
- Which strategies you can use for each trend.
- How each strategy is developing, using real-world examples of companies and brands
- Which trends and strategies you should think about today and which are emergent, so you can prepare for them in the future
- Which strategies are higher risk and which are lower risk.
The report is also available in Powerpoint (available November 17th) to make it easier for you to share and discuss with colleagues, customers, and suppliers.
Written in a clear, 'get-to-the-point' style, by people who have both industry experience and scientific knowledge, this is the only report that tells you what your opportunities and challenges are going to be and what you can do about them.
This is why, for two decades, the smartest people in the business have used 10 Key Trends as a practical tool to help formulate strategy and innovation planning. Unlike other trend lists that come up with 10 entirely new things every year, we focus only on what the most important long-term trends are - the ones that will stick around.
Companies from America to Japan, Australia to France, and Sweden to South Korea rely on this report and find themselves returning again and again to 10 Key Trends for guidance.
Who will benefit from reading 10 Key Trends?
- Brands, big or small, looking for a strategic direction or wanting to refine their strategy
- Ingredient suppliers trying to understand the opportunities for their products and how to help their customers succeed
- Researchers trying to figure out how to commercialize nutrition science
- Start-ups (or anyone contemplating a start-up)
- Investors looking to place their money wisely
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Key Trend summaries
- Category opportunities
- Mega Trend 1: Fragmentation of health beliefs
- Mega Trend 2: Naturally Functional
- Mega Trend 3: Weight Wellness
- Mega Trend 4: Snackification at the heart of strategy
- Mega Trend 5: Sustainability
- Key Trend 1: Carbs - Grains with Benefits, Fewer, Greener
- Key Trend 2: Digestive Wellness Diversifies
- Key Trend 3: Plants Made Convenient
- Key Trend 4: Animal Protein Powers On
- Key Trend 5: Sweetness Reinvented
- Key Trend 6: The Plant Protein Paradox
- Key Trend 7: Redefining Fat
- Key Trend 8: Mood & Mind
- Key Trend 9: Real Food & the UPF Challenge
- Key Trend 10: Provenance & authenticity
List of Charts
Chart 1: Central bank money printing has set us up for an economic crisis
Chart 2: Brands in this report on the nutritional product life-cycle
Chart 3: Consumers turn to Dr Internet for health & nutrition advice
Chart 4: Instagram reveals consumer interest in naturally functional
Chart 5: Instagram weight loss hashtags, YTD Sept 2022
Chart 6: Worldwide Google searches for weight loss
Chart 7: The most successful brands link to multiple growth trends
Chart 8: The carb avoidance trend is losing momentum
Chart 9: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 1, Carbs
Chart 10: Product Life-cycle - Key Trend 1, Carbs
Chart 11: Consumer interest in ‘probiotics’ and ‘microbiome’ on Instagram
Chart 12: The consumer for fibre skews older
Chart 13: Sales gains and losses of plant milks, 12 months to June 2022
Chart 14: Oatly financial performance global ($m)
Chart 15: Lactose-free dairy milk outsells every type of plant milk
Chart 16: Grain free is favoured by younger consumers
Chart 17: High FODMAPs foods that athletes eliminate to reduce GI symptoms and improve performance
Chart 18: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 2, Digestive Wellness
Chart 19: Product Life-cycle - Key Trend 2, Digestive Wellness
Chart 20: How American consumers define healthy foods
Chart 21: Carrot’s health halo has made it a must-have ingredient
Chart 22: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 3, Plants Made Convenient
Chart 23: Product Life-cycle - Key Trend 3, Plants Made Convenient
Chart 24: Multiple consumer motivations for choosing protein
Chart 25: Animal proteins have multiple competitive advantages and brands are building on these
Chart 26: A tale of two protein strategies
Chart 27: Whey protein has a superior amino acid profile to any plant protein
Chart 28: Grass fed is more interesting to American consumers than any other sustainability term related to food
Chart 29: Meat snack sales keep on growing - at double the rate of plants
Chart 30: Social media attention to collagen is high and increasing
Chart 31: Google searches for collagen outstrip probiotics, 2018 to May 22
Chart 32: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 4, Animal Protein Powers On
Chart 33: Product Life-cycle - Key Trend 4, Animal Protein Powers On
Chart 34: % of consumers avoiding sugar
Chart 35: % of consumers avoiding foods that spike blood sugar
Chart 36: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 5, Sweetness Reinvented
Chart 37: Product Life-cycle - Key Trend 5, Sweetness Reinvented
Chart 38: Steady growth in Instagram posts referencing chickpeas
Chart 39: The trend of reducing meat consumption is not growing as fast as it once was
Chart 40: US weekly meat retail sales ($), to 14 Oct 22
Chart 41: Beyond Meat’s losses worsen every year - it has never made a profit
Chart 42: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 6, Plant protein Paradox
Chart 43: Product Life-cycle - Key Trend 6, Plant protein Paradox
Chart 44: Percentage of people who think the following “fat foods” are healthy (Brazil vs US)
Chart 45: Percentage of people who think the following foods are sources of healthy fats, 2018 vs 2022
Chart 46: US sales of whole milk retail, 2016 to 2021 (US$bn)
Chart 47: Number of posts with selected hashtags on Instagram, to September 2022
Chart 48: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 7, Redefining Fat
Chart 49: Product Life-cycle- Key Trend 7, Redefining Fat
Chart 50: % of consumers who claim to be eating the following foods to boost their mood and mental wellbeing
Chart 51: % of consumers eating foods that boost their mood and mental wellbeing, by age segment
Chart 52: Growth of Instagram hashtags for ingredients with less than 200,000 posts, Sept 2020 - Jan 2022
Chart 53: Growth of Instagram hashtags for ingredients with more than 200,000 posts, Sept 2020 - Jan 2022
Chart 54: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 8, Mood & Mind
Chart 55: Product Life-cycle - Key Trend 8, Mood & Mind
Chart 56: % of diet that is ultra-processed foods, northern vs southern Europe
Chart 57: Kind Snacks was a pioneer in the evolution of packaged food to real food
Chart 58: How the fewer UPFs & more real food trend will evolve in consumer behaviour over the next 5+ years
Chart 59: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 9, Real Food & the UPF Challenge
Chart 60: Product Life-cycle - Key Trend 9, Real Food & the UPF Challenge
Chart 61: Trend Diamond - Key Trend 10, Provenance & authenticity
Chart 62: Product Life-cycle - Key Trend 10, Provenance & authenticity
List of Tables
Table 1: Nutrient-dense vs nutrient-poor foods
Table 2: Two types of usually-required plant-based ingredients
Table 3: Functional hierarchy of plant-based ingredients
Table 4: Nutrient-dense vs nutrient-poor foods
Table 5: Anti-nutritional factors found in plant-based sources of protein
Table 6: Growth in usage of nootropic & adaptogenic hashtags on Instagram, Sept 20-Jan 22
Table 7: Two buzzwords in mood
Table 8: These simple definitions are fast becoming the benchmark among researchers
