COMPANIES and brands throughout food and drink have been working to produce products that give options to consumers who want to choose items with, for example, less fat or sugar than regular products.
Famous brand-owning giant Unilever says it’s providing healthy options across its portfolio of food brands.
Hellmann’s with Olive Oil Style Dressing was launched last year. It features a blend of olive oil and is, the firm says, a good natural source of Omega 3 fatty acids. And Hellmann’s flavoured mayonnaises are made with Hellmann’s Light Mayonnaise which has less than half the calories of Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise.
Its spread brand Flora has been backed by a new advertising campaign that stresses its plant-based ingredients which are rich in Vitamin E, high in Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids and lower in saturated fat than butter.
• Soft drinks firm AG Barr says that with demand growing for low-calorie and low-sugar products, retailers should stock up.
It highlights its own Irn-Bru Sugar Free as Scotland’s best-selling low-calorie flavoured carbonate with sales of over £1m a week.
Rockstar Pure Zero is its low-sugar energy drink, part of a sub-category it expects to be worth £200m in sales in the next five years.
• Coca-Cola Enterprise trade communications manager Donna Pisani said lower and zero-calorie ranges have been key to CCE for some time.
“We have invested £15m on reformulation since 2012, helping to reduce the average calorie content in our sparkling drinks by 5.3 per cent. We will invest at least £15m in R&D and product development by 2020,” she said.
The Coca-Cola range is now marketed as a unified brand that includes several lower- calorie and calorie-free options and its latest Schweppes adult soft drinks have the lowest calorie count in the adult special sector of soft drinks, she said.
CBL Drinks, which has the Perfectly Clear range of sugar-free flavoured waters says its recent research found 80% of people were concerned about the sugar content of drinks.
Its Perfectly Clear range as well as being sugar-free also contains vitamins.
