Sugar continues to put consumers’ health at risk in the Asia Pacific Region and in the world at large. Consumers want it all – indulgent treats and products that help them tackle obesity and address their weight loss management efforts. They are taking steps to proactively improve their and their family’s overall health and wellness.
Yet one thing remains true, taste is king. While consumers are more cognisant of what they put in their bodies, they still want those products to taste good. They are willing to have full sugar products as treats rather than completely remove them from their diets.
So how can food and beverage brands make better-for-you products that taste delicious enough for consumers to purchase time and time again and eventually help to eliminate cravings for massive amounts of sugar?
Reduced-sugar products can be polarising. When something is labeled “Sugar Free” it is targeting a certain demographic of consumers that have become accustomed to certain off notes associated with artificial sugar alternatives. There are unique approaches to sugar reduction that can ensure you remain relevant to mainstream consumers.
Creating Health by Sugar-Reduction Stealth
Reformulating food and beverage products to slash sugar and still taste amazing can be challenging. If the sensory experience is altered too much, negatively affecting texture, mouthfeel, and aftertaste, it will fail to meet consumer taste expectations for indulgent and delicious products and you can lose sales and brand trust as a result of such a radical change.
But the formulation challenges associated with sugar reduction do not outweigh the positive impact of reducing sugar in products to improve the health of consumers globally. It is best to take action by joining the sugar reduction revolution now rather than staying stagnant with the risk of becoming irrelevant to health-conscious consumers in the years to come.
The “health by stealth” approach to sugar reduction allows gradual reduction of sugar from food and beverage products without calling out specific details of how the changes were made, also known as reducing sugar in “stealth mode.” Sugar can play a big role in product development beyond sweetening a product, as it can add structure and bulk to formulations. By creating a slight stealth sugar reduction in your product renovation, you can stretch out existing sugar to accommodate the texture of the flagship product instead of creating an entirely new product with a completely different taste profile. This sugar-reduction approach ensures brands can replicate the sensory integrity of the flagship product with a higher likelihood that consumers will accept the renovated better-for-you product and adopt it as part of their lifestyle.
Leading the Industry in Advanced Sugar Reduction Technologies with Sweegen
The key to successful stealth sugar reduction is to optimise the sensory experience through slight sugar reduction and avoiding extreme sensory modification that often results in dissatisfied consumers with certain taste and mouthfeel profile expectations. This is why Sweegen’s natural flavors for taste modulation should be in the toolkit of every product developer who is serious about sugar reduction.
When creating better-for-you products, with functional ingredients or reduced sugar, taste modulators provide exceptional flexibility for re-establishing balance in a food or beverage system. They can help block bitterness, boost the perception of flavor, manage a lingering note, enhance mouthfeel, or reduce astringency.
Leveraging Sweegen’s advanced sugar-reduction technologies and partnering with their product development experts, known as Taste Blazers, empowers brands to create healthier reduced-sugar reformulations with premium texture, mouthfeel, and microbial stability. Sweegen’s natural flavors for taste modulation can provide slight sugar reduction, while allowing you to cater to specific sugar reduction levels, to allow you to meet (and often exceed) consumer expectations when reducing sugar in unique and delicious ways.
Sweegen taste modulation flavor systems help meet brand specific requirements in heat stability, processing conditions, cost and taste, without drastically impacting product labels or ingredient statements. Sweegen’s personalised approach to product development can help brands achieve sugar reduction goals and support formulation challenges associated with building back what is lost when sugar is removed, enabling creation of market products that mainstream consumers accept, trust, and enjoy.
You have a Choice. Choose Well.
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https://sweegen.com/portfolio/taste-modulation/
https://sweegen.com/leveraging-local/apac-innovations/
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