Covertly Cleaning Up.

The big bad food company, it's a phrase most of us have heard whether we are familiar with food and nutrition or not. Many people assume that food companies are hiding things from consumers. Their objective may still be to increase the money that lines their pockets, but what they’re hiding may not be what you think.

While reading the winter issue of the ADA times, a publication from the American Dietetic Association, I read about the food trends predicted for 2011. Mintel, a London based market research firm, predicted that companies will reduce sodium, added sugar and fat from their products without advertising the changes. I immediately had two questions:

1. Why would companies start making healthful changes now?

2. Why aren’t they advertising the reductions?

According to Dr. Douglas Balentine, Director of Nutrition Sciences from Unilever, the newly released Dietary Guidelines for Americans are more effective than we thought. Maybe the public doesn’t fully grasp the concepts, but industry has taken notice and taken action. Dr. Richard Black from Kraft spoke in another class of mine and said, “Consumer interest in health and wellness is growing.” Companies are reformulating products to be healthier to meet the growing demand from the public.

So why aren’t these companies using the healthful changes to sell more products?

I had the pleasure to attend a seminar in which Ed Frechette, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Au bon pan, spoke about covertly making their products healthier. “People don’t buy something if you tell them it’s healthy. As soon as you put the badge of ‘healthy’ on something it wouldn’t sell.”
Here is a video of the seminar.

I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to believing certain things that food companies say. Although, I feel a little better knowing they are trying. Food companies may be sneaky, but in this case it is in the best of ways.