Dive Brief:
- From pasta and juices to better-for-you desserts, food and beverage manufacturers are finding new ways to sneak"fruits and vegetables into unsuspecting products, The New York Times reported.
- These attempts especially appeal to parents who are trying to increase the fruit and vegetable consumption of their sometimes picky children.
- Beyond parents, these products are also attractive to health conscious consumers looking for ways to incorporate healthy ingredients in products they commonly eat, such as brownie products mixed with spinach or sweet potatoes.
Dive Insight:
Manufacturers are able to "secretly" slip fruits and vegetables into products by dehydrating the produce and then grinding it into a fine powder. That powder then adds nutrients from the original fruit or vegetable into a wide range of products. Home cooks have perfected this processing trick over the years, but manufacturers have become more adept at applying this on an industrial scale.
This increased effort may derive from consumers' and activists' complaints about foods targeted at children. Strategic marketing can build a loyal customer, and children often sway their parents' purchase decisions in-store. But some consumers are concerned that children's foods and beverages are predominately in the junk food category. That includes the products themselves and the marketing efforts surrounding them, includng digital and online marketing.
However, manufacturers should be mindful of any nutrition claims they make on a product's label. By teaming up with food scientists, they can more accurately determine how much of a nutrient their product contains, since produce can lose some of its nutritional value in the dehydrating and powderizing process. That could invalidate certain regulated claims, such as "an excellent source of (nutrient)."