A message for the industry: Less sugar is possible

Healthy product development

The current food environment is characterized by the wide availability of unhealthy products with high sugar, fat and salt content. This constitutes a major barrier for the development of healthy dietary patterns among children and preadolescents. In this context, WP4 “Healthy Food Product Development” has explored children-driven product development, based on the idea that products targeted at children and preadolescents should have an adequate nutrition composition and satisfy their preferences in order to be successful. The objective of WP4 was development of specific healthy products targeted at children (infant, toddlers and preadolescents) considering intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics and evaluation of methods to evaluate perception during new product development.

The intrinsic characteristics are related to the product itself (taste, appearance, nutrition), whereas the extrinsic characteristics are related to “outer” parts of the product such as packaging, prize and brand.

The objectives of WP4 has been

  1. to develop nutritionally optimized products targeted at children
  2. to develop research-based guidelines for sugar and salt reduction of food products targeted at children
  3. to compare novel temporal sensory methods with children during the development of sugar-reduced products
  4. to evaluate the influence of package information on the perception of children and their mothers

The early stage researchers that have been involved in WP4 are Ana Velasquez (ESR11) , Martina Galler (ESR1) , Sofia De Rosso (ESR6) and Andreia de Ferreira (ESR8).

Results

For a full overview of the scientific results we refer  Edulia publications. Under WP4 you will find publications related to product development with children, whereas results related to nudging and packaging can also be found under WP7.

The below infographic (opens in new page when clicking on the image), lists the main results that is important for the industry:

 

 

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