Boston-based startup Slate Milk – which gives adults permission to keep drinking chocolate milk by dialing down the sugar, increasing the protein and packaging it as a functional beverage in shelf-stable cans - has raised $1.7m in a seed round (taking...
The functional beverage consumer and their purchase motivations are just as diverse as the functional beverage category itself, which encompasses everything from sports drinks and energy drinks to ionized/alkaline water and nutrient-infused coffee, says...
Rule Breaker Snacks, an allergy-friendly snack brand featuring chickpeas as its star ingredient, has secured a minority investment from Bimbo Ventures, the venture capital arm of global baking company Grupo Bimbo.
While the nut butter category has evolved dramatically in recent years - with JIF and Skippy now competing with everything from almond and cashew butters to sunflower seed, mushroom, and chickpea butters - the jams and jellies category doesn’t look wildly...
While there are plenty of beverages targeting young children, with recent launches from Kraft Heinz (Creative Roots) and Nestlé (Fruity Water) offering low or no-sugar options, there is a gap in the market for teens, claims PepsiCo, which says new launch...
PepsiCo expands its footprint in the burgeoning functional beverage category with today’s launch of bubly bounce – the first RTD extension of the company’s popular and playful sparkling water line that adds “just a subtle kick of caffeine” to help consumers...
Mondelēz SnackFutures – the company's innovation and venture hub – has launched CoLab, a "startup engagement" program, targeting snack brands in the wellness space as the global snacking giant digs deeper into the startup community.
A limited-supply Palate Training Kits released today from Icelandic skyr brand siggi’s takes an innovative approach to sugar reduction, which has gained prominence among consumers during the pandemic, but which continues to be stymied by taste and convenience...
Structured ‘super-expanding’ natural fibers that can capture fats and sugars in the stomach and prevent their absorption in the small intestine could help reduce calorie intakes and deliver digestive health benefits, claims the CEO of nutritional technology...
Does ‘sorta sweet’ imply that a product is low in sugar? Or does it simply mean that it tastes ‘kind of sweet’ (as the maker of StraightUp Tea asserts in a bid to fend off a false advertising lawsuit)?
Leading Canadian organic baby food brand Baby Gourmet is eager to expand its manufacturing capacity and bring its organic meals and snacks for babies and toddlers into the US after joining Hero Group’s “goodness of nature” portfolio, which also includes...
GoodSam Foods, a new brand of no-sugar-added, direct-trade chocolate launched by BeyondBrands, has entered the sugar-free chocolate confectionery category with products sweetened with emerging sweetener allulose.
PepsiCo is driving incremental growth for two of its hottest brands by bringing together flavored sparkling water bubly and at home water carbonation platform SodaStream to launch a line of bubly drops that will hit store shelves and ecommerce this month.
Stevia specialist SweeGen has commercialized Reb N, a lesser-known steviol glycoside “with a unique sensory profile… that makes it especially attractive for beverage applications.”
The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines advise Americans to watch their sugar and alcohol consumption but fall short of recommending the drastic cuts recently suggested by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC).
Displaying health warnings on sugar-sweetened drinks could be an effective way of reducing consumption, suggest US researchers, who found a 14.5% decline in consumption among students when warning labels were displayed on drinks in a college cafeteria....
Tate & Lyle has acquired Washington state-based stevia supplier Sweet Green Fields (SGF), strengthening the global ingredients company’s stevia solutions and capabilities by creating a fully-integrated supply chain along with unified research and...
The functional beverage space is heating up, but there are pockets of opportunity in enhanced sparkling water, says Colin McCabe, who co-founded fast-casual salad chain Chop’t, and is now moving into new territory with Free Rain, a line of beverages infused...
Kids are drinking less milk and juice as they get older, but what are they drinking instead, and is it good for them? How do parents evaluate what types of drinks are good for kids? What are parents looking for on food labels?
DouxMatok, the Israeli firm behind patented technology that makes sugar taste sweeter, has struck a deal with Canadian sugar refiner Rogers Sugar, parent of Lantic, to manufacture commercial quantities of its ‘enhanced’ sugar, with the first products...
Houston, Texas-based brand Llamaland Organics is introducing American families to a variety of superfood ingredients sourced directly from Peru through approachable and familiar product formats including cereals and fruit spreads.
There’s been a lot of innovation in the baby and toddler food market in recent years, and many new brands target Gen Z and Millennials. But kids aged 4-11 often get overlooked, says Mavericks Snacks founder Livio Bisterzo, who hit CPG gold with Hippeas...
We had a record number of entries for this year's FOOD FOR KIDS Trailblazers Challenge, spanning everything from chickpea butter and lentil-based meat crumbles to bubbly probiotic water and veggie-infused ketchup. Here are some of the innovations...
Describing a beverage that contains 20g of added sugar per serving as ‘lightly sweetened' is deceptive and misleading, claims a proposed class action lawsuit filed against Healthy Beverage Co, maker of Steaz iced teas.
With today’s launch of a trio of toddler purees with bone broth, emerging children’s food brand Serenity Kids not only expands its reach beyond baby food pouches, but its founders say they hope to further boost the brand’s already fast-rising position...
School closures – and tentative re-openings – have compounded stress levels for families, while COVID-19-induced economic anxiety is also straining household budgets. So how can food and beverage brands come up with enticing – but affordable – recipes,...
Per-capita liquid refreshment beverage (LRB) calories have declined 5.6% over a five-year period (from 203 calories per person per day in 2014 to 191.8 calories in 2019), according to the American Beverage Association’s latest Beverage Calories Initiative...
A new slate of better-for-you, non-alcoholic beverage brands developed by Molson Coors and beverage incubator L.A. Libations launching over the next several months -- including a plant-based barley milk and a nootropic performance beverage -- will position...
While uncertainty around the reopening of America in 2021 complicates predicting at-home versus away-from-home consumption for the full year, General Mills expects retail sales of its CPGs to remain higher than pre-pandemic levels for at least the next...
An analysis of 21,096 food products from 9,083 brands across 44 categories found an association between Facts Up Front labeling – in which nutrition facts appear on the front of the package in addition to mandated nutritional information on the back of...
With $2M in just-announced seed funding, a “junk free” promise and a bright, modern packaging that trades heavily in on-trend buzz words, recently launched Bellway aims to bring new life – and a younger generation – to the sleepy fiber segment.
CHOMPS – known for its brightly-colored meat sticks and miniature CHOMPLINGS products – is seeking to capture a 'significant share' of the meat snacks category by focusing on the "metrics that really matter," says co-founder and CEO...
Boulder-based Sovos Brands is building out its portfolio of what it calls 'one-of-a-kind brands' with a signed agreement to acquire Birch Benders, the #1 'just-add-water' pancake and waffle mix in the natural channel.
Sugar cane distillates and cane molasses distillates can form an intriguing part of the sugar reduction toolkit, says ASR Group, the world’s largest cane sugar refining and marketing company. FoodNavigator-USA (FNU) caught up with Cesar Contreras (CC),...
Despite sugar reduction being a major consumer health trend impacting nearly every corner of the CPG industry, many food and beverage products in Canada have seen limited changes in sugar content, a recent study by the University of Toronto suggests.
By Aga Jarzabek, Research Analyst, Euromonitor International
Reduced sugar categories have seen high growth in the past, but their sales have dipped as consumers became hesitant about artificial sweeteners. However, in the past year, sales have seen a guarded rebound across many categories due to new launches and...
Upstart candy brand Behave has entered the buzzing low-sugar gummy candy category with its line of original and sour gummy bears which tout 3g of sugar, 6g of net carbs, and 90 calories per serving.
Keurig Dr. Pepper (KDP) has taken a minority investment with a defined path to ownership in emerging brand ‘Don’t Quit’ to become the next heavyweight in the segment, said KDP president Robert Gamgort during the firm's Q2 2020 earnings call.
All entrepreneurs are destined to fail, but that doesn’t mean they also must lose, according to the CEO of the startup ingredient company Rambuhealth, who explained that companies can overcome almost any obstacle as long as leaders are creative, decisive...
The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s recent recommendations that children under 2 years avoid all added sugar to ensure they consume the nutrients they need without excessive caloric intake may not go far enough to drive a significant change in...
The US must strengthen and increase funding for federal nutrition research to accelerate critical discoveries, and most importantly, improve public health, say a group of research, policy, and government experts in a new report.
Foods and beverages sweetened with miraculin, brazzein and curculin - proteins found in exotic fruits that can be produced far more efficiently via microbial fermentation - could hit the US market in less than two years, offering formulators intriguing...
Israeli startup Better Juice has signed agreements with US-based global beverage manufacturers to commercialize its patent-pending enzymatic technology, which can achieve up to 80% sugar reduction of naturally-occurring sugars (e.g. sucrose, glucose,...
Americans need to more than halve their consumption of added sugars, reducing average consumption from 13% of daily energy intake to just 6%, the equivalent of 30g for someone on a 2,000 calorie-a-day diet, according to the expert committee advising the...
MCTco is competing in the highly-competitive snack bar category, addressing major consumer demands around protein and sugar content as well as emerging ‘beauty-from-within’ and immunity trends with its line of products containing collagen protein and...
Baze, a personalized nutrition startup which provides customers with tailored supplements based on its at-home blood diagnostic test, has broadened its service to include food and meal recommendations addressing the “root cause” of nutrient deficiencies,...
From plant-based protein trends to sustainable packaging, managing food waste, using artificial intelligence to track consumer sentiment, and the latest developments in cell-cultured meat and keto diet trends, here are some of the education sessions that...
A majority (81%) of consumers say transparency is ‘important’ or ‘extremely important’ to them when shopping online and in-store, according to a new report by The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and Chicago-based Label Insight.
After years of steady decline, sales of cereal have rebounded dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic as consumers sheltering in place who once skipped breakfast in the face of long commutes now have time – and no other options – to eat at home.
Beverage companies spent $1.04bn to advertise sugary drinks and energy drinks in 2018 in the US, a 26% increase compared to 2013, according to Sugary Drinks FACTS 2020, a new report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the University...