There is no doubt that the snack food market is one of the strongest in the food industry, as is evidenced by its increasing market value. The snack category of food used to meaning snack chips, nuts and other traditional snacks (extruded snacks, popcorn, nachos etc.). However, the snack category is currently expanding to a large number of products that often has nothing to do with what we knew as snacks.
Historically, the snacks were something that we consumed around the daily main meals and that made us feel guilty about eating too much calories. We used to tell to our children “don´t fill up on snacks” before lunch or dinner. However, consumption of snacks has become increasingly common and is no longer between meals, is the food!.
Certainly, the culture of food is in constant motion (and who said for the better?) adapting to new lifestyles (cooking less, spend more time away from home) and in this new attitude there is room enough for more varieties of products that are easy to eat, with no-needed or very little preparation needed and a size easy to take away.According to Nielsen, the nowadays picture in Spain is that 45% of consumers regularly eat a snack as an alternative to one or more meals daily. Out of this value, 52 % do it for breakfast, 43 % on luch time and 40 % at dinner moment.
But consumes become more aware of nutritional values and claim for snacks to be healthy (or make us feel less guilty of eating out of the three-meals patron …) and to provide some health benefit. This is driving the food industry to spread the wings of innovation and create all kind of products rich in nutrients (proteins, vitamins, minerals, etc), fresh (or minimally processed, but packaged and ready to use), products high-density, low-glycemic index, low sugar, salt and fat among others. Here is a small sample of what is already in the market and what is coming soon:
Cereals, pulses, vegetables and fruits. The healthy snack category
The perception of the snack as something unhealthy and loaded with calories fades with launched products to cover this category. We found a wide variety of dehydrated fruits and vegetables (whether or not coated and with more or less sugar content), cereals of all shapes and colors, but mostly whole grains, either alone or mixed with goji berries, berries or dry fruits. Very present, the so-called “ancient grains” (chia, sorghum, quinoa, millet ..) cooked and ready to eat in bars or expanded products. Probiotics have migrated and are no longer in yogurt .
Now they are provided by fermented vegetable, or cereals, proteins, rice and chia with probiotic cultures. There is also a great tendency to germination process: cereal flour and sprouted legumes that are attributed interesting nutritional properties and are considered more easily digestible. And undoubtedly coming hard, combinations of cereals and vegetables or fruits and vegetables that add flavor, color and above all … nutrients, especially vitamins A, C E and D.
Dehydrated fruit and vegetable snacks
Pulses (white bean and pinto beans and lentils) and germinated cereals snacks
Fruit smoothies
Proteins: the meat snacks
Considering meat and fish as a protein source, different types of snacks and even innovation formats for consumption processed meat products are arising. Some examples are shavings of ham or corned beef, the so-called jerkies (dehydrated or marinated meat), seasoned with all kinds of spices and aromas.
Seasoned jerkies
And coming to snack market: meat sticks or bars. High protein content, veal, lamb, pork, bison… or insects.
Beef and vegetable and insect flour bars
Beef, chicken, pig, turkey, salmon or…bison bars
One size cured meat product
The dairy snack market
The dairy snack development is mainly focused on children. Thus, we find a wide variety of packaging formats such pouch or bag to take away. Healthy solutions for children through the development of dairy sticks (e.g. with the calcium content equivalent to a glass of milk, rich in protein and low in calories) but above all, innovation in the packaging presentation: single dose or ready for consumption, mainly at school break or at the playground time.
Small formats for cheese
It is very clear that the snack development offers great opportunities and there are many companies who see in the snackificationan opportunity to develop a palatable, healthy and ready to eat between meals or as a meal. Of course, according to the consumer criteria of what they percive as healthy, sustainable and what they are willing to pay for it. Of course, a reflection exercise must be done by the food industry to combine all these keys and consider that innovation happens largely by new or unusually ingredients and new production processes or technologies.
I tell you a real situation: Some years ago, I was chatting with a friend, when she looked at me very serious and said: I am not be able to lose weight! My doctor says that vegetables fattens me and the worst thing is that I love it! In that moment, those words seemed so absurd that I stayed quiet. Today, almost 20 years later, I have understood that my friend (a clear visionary) was speaking about genomic nutrition o personalized nutrition.
As we know, in the studies of dietary intervention, the results are the average value of all individual who have participated in the study. But, what would we find out if the results would be analyzed individually? In some people, a change in dietwouldn´t feel any effect (hypo-responders), others would feel a medium effect (normo-responders) and others would feel an effect greater than expected (hyper-responders).
During the last decades, we have passed from believing that diet produces the same effect in all individuals to accept that changes in diet are partly caused by the inter-individual differences in the human genome.
And that is precisely what we have lived in projects about “health food” developed in CARTIF. If we look back, we have more than 20 years designing functional foods and even collaborating in intervention studies in humans with the objective of verifying its effectiveness.
The project CENIT HIGEA (2007-2010) was undoubtedly the most important in the design of food with beneficial effects on health. In this project we feel ourselves as Dr. Brand on “interstellar: we were missing variables to solve optimally our trials of intervention.” We had not contemplated that the response to food varies depending on the specific characteristics of each person!
In fact, in a trial of intervention realized in HIGEA, we got that the consumption of a bar enriched in Omega-3 only produced an improvement in the lipid profile and the inflammatory pattern in men but not in women who participated in the study.
With these antecedents, in the year 2014 we began to work in the Project PRIMICIA. As its name suggests, for the first time, we get ingredients and healthy food (cookies, juices, jams, and pasta) bearing in mind the genetic profile of the population. It is necessary to mention that although the advances in the knowledge and technologies developed about of the human genome have been spectacular during the last years, the nutritional genomic is still a recent discipline and there is some confusion.
The project PRIMICIA is just the beginning in the industrial development of effective foodto improve the health of people in a personalized way. I propose complete the famous phrase “You are what you eat” saying: “You are what you eat because this determines which genes are expressed” and as I also have the gene “mother”, I would add: “so be careful!”
Extrusion technology allows to improve the nutricional, sensorial and fuctional properties of food. Find out what we are doing in CARTIF with pulses, in the International Year of Pulses, in this videoblog of our colleague Belén Blanco.
More than once, especially in the villages, we have heard a farmer saying a similar phrase: “Wheat is growing a lot due to rains this year, what a pity! Because many weeds will grow and I will have to spread herbicides”. Before this comment it could open a long discussion.
It is known that weeds are a problem, but there are other ways so that they do not encroach crops, without resorting to herbicides. We must not let them grow so that invade crops, but neither eradicate them, because they also have other beneficial effects, such as they help to control pests and favor the presence of pollinators in the field.
So, what happens? Should we leave them or not? Well, there are other solutions such as leaving margins between crops and introduce aromatic plants or fruit trees which prevent the emergence of weeds in these margins, like cereal fields were interspersed with orchards and even fruit trees years ago. It is what is called creating mulches.
What are the covers or mulches vegetal?
The implementation of mulches consists on sowing between the streets or lines any cultivable crop species or let the natural vegetation grow spontaneously. The mulches are used as a strategy for soil management, because they reduce the risk of erosion besides increasing the biodiversity of the natural enemies of the usual crop pests.
Mulches compete with weeds for space, light and nutrients and, therefore, they help to reduce the costs of weed control which is an advantage for the farmer. Other cover crops produce allelopathic substances (biochemical compounds that influence in growth, survival or reproduction of other organisms) which inhibit the growth of certain weeds and, in general, mulches, like hedges, are a reservoir where beneficial organisms can live, which can pass to the crop in search of prey (pests).
Are mulches used a lot?
Mulches are widely used in organic farming. Organic farming, regulated by (EC) Nº 834/2007 Regulation of 28 June 2007, forbids the use of chemical pesticides and synthetic origin fertilizers; therefore, in organic production different management strategies are developed to comply with regulations. One of these techniques is to increase the diversity in and around the crop with different plants which stimulate the diversity of beneficial organisms. The most important diversification technique is the use of mulches between lines of crops.
The mulches issue is highly questionable by both parts, the staunchest supporters and those who never would put into practice. It is clear that by introducing a new crop between the lines of other major crop, for example a vineyard, there will be a competition with the vines, and this can join a production loss, but it can also be very interesting to get a higher quality product due to improvements in soil, or a different microbial flora which can influence the sensory characteristics of the wine produced with those grapes may appear.
Sometimes it takes several decades and we evolved on many issues but in other cases it tends to do things as in the past, as in the case of introducing mulches between lines of crops, although you can always add new techniques as a result of R & D. In CARTIF, we work both in of viticulture and enology fields, where we have made seeding experiences of mulches of aromatic plants between vineyard lines, as in the development of low environmental impact and organic farming techniques.
Everybody has lived something like this. Open the pantry, take a packet of rice, flour or pasta and… insect! We find out that our foods are infected with bugs.
Insect contamination of stored food is a very annoying and worrying problem for consumers and for food companies. It involves high losses of raw materials and stored products, giving room to huge economic losses and damaging the image of the brand.
These animals are not pathogenic and do not represent a health problem for consumers, but the contaminated packet is discarded directly blaming the manufacturer, even without being responsible in the most cases.
The contaminating insects of stored products are diverse and attacks multitude of food: flour, rice, nuts, dried fruit, bread, cookies, pasta, etc. In Europe, there are approximately 300 million tons of grains which run the risk of contamination by pests during post-harvest treatment, storage and then, in food companies facilities (Stesjakl, V. 2014)
Raw materials and food companies face a big problem trying to control and remove of their facilities these arthropods, which find in silos and warehouse the perfect place to feed and reproduce. Companies use different methods of food insect contamination prevention, control and elimination in all their processes, in order to ensure that their products are free from any contamination. In addition, they must pass rigorous audits in which each process and corner of their factories are reviewed for this purpose.
However, once products leave the factory, the control over is very difficult. These insects live to feed and reproduce, so looking for food is their priority. Contamination by insects is much more susceptible during the transport process, during storage and at homes, despite all the measures.
These arthropods have an exceptional sense of smell and they are able to smell the food through packaging and packages, so they introduce themselves by any small hole or crack of the package. Besides, they are able to drill paper, cardboard and all kind of plastics (penetrator insects). For this reason, the R&D departments of food businesses, and research centers with which they work, are constantly innovating their packaging and seeking alternatives to improve them and make them more resistant to bugs.
As consumers, we must look at the supermarket if the packages have some sign of being damaged and, at home, we have to keep products in glass or metal. In addition, if we find out in our pantry some infected package, we must remove all products that may have been contaminated and proceed to clean it thoroughly.
From the point of view of researching, due to the increasing restrictions on the use of insecticides, such as methyl bromide or phosphine, they are conducting studies to replace these methods by others technologies less harmful and more friendly with environment, such as the use of pheromones or the use of extreme temperatures for cleaning and control plants.
In relation to packages, advances are aimed at the incorporation of repellent substances to deter insects attack. Last trials are aimed at the use of essential oil which, encapsulated and polyvinyl alcohol, could be printed as an ink onto polypropylene film and used as packaging material repellent to insects (Jo Hean-Joo, 2015)
With all these advances, it will be difficult to say ‘there is a bug in my pantry!’
The newly closed Rio 2016 Olympic Games are still in our minds, means of communication and webs, and we are wondering some questions such as how the diet is for athletes? what kind of products they consume? Are they suitable for any athlete with less level?
After 14 years of discussion, the European Commission published last June the highly anticipated report on food intended for sportspeople. The purpose of this report was determine whether the food for sportspeople are special food (and therefore, if it would be necessary a specific provisions) or simply consider them as a food used commonly.
This report builds upon a market study on food intended for athletes carried out by the Food Chain Evaluation Consortium (FCEC). The number of sport products present in the market can be estimated, on the basis of the innovation rate at EU level, to between approximately 20,000 and 30.000. The FCEC Study identified the following three categories of sport food:
1.Isotonic drinks (61 %) 2.Protein-based products for muscle strengthening, building and post exercise recovery (26 %). 3. Products to increase energy and performance and continuous complementary products for athletes (13 %).
Sport food is not defined in EU legislation. For the purpose of this report, the study considered as “sportspeople” those people who practice sport once a week or more. Also the definition of “sportspeople” included the requirement to consume at least a sports food in the last year.
Finally, the Commission concluded that there is no necessity for specific provisions for food intended for sportspeople. After 20 July 2016, a sport food will be considered under horizontal rules of food law as a food supplement (accordance with Directive 2002/46/CE) or, as a fortified food (accordance with Regulation (EC) 1924/2006 and Regulation (EU) Nº 1169/2011). The arguments for this decision are:
• People who carry out sport activities hardly can be characterized as a specific vulnerable group of consumers. • Sometimes, it is very difficult to understand whether a specific product has to be considered as a food intended for particular nutritional uses by sportsmen or a food for normal consumption fortified in certain nutrients with a health claim targeting sportspeople. • The horizontal rules of food law provide the necessary safeguards for these products in terms of food safety, food composition, consumer information and legal certainty.
Currently, there are already some authorized healthy claims aims at sportspeople (see next table). Relevant claims for sportspeople on caffeine are under discussion. On the other hand, despite the fact that EFSA regarded the beneficial effect of sodium, there is not authorization to say ‘high in sodium’, because it is not beneficial for everybody.
Operators are clearly divided on the question whether specific legislation is necessary for sports food or whether sports food should be legislated by horizontal rules of food law.
An industry group is worried because they think the innovation of these products is limited. But, you know, “you can´t please everybody”.
