The company’s stoplight color-coded scoring system for food goes beyond simply counting calories to consider nutrient density and ingredient quality, which not only helps consumers more easily make more informed choices but can help brands earn better shelf placement in store and improve consumer loyalty, according to the company’s CEO Samantha Citro Alexander.
She said that the company is on a mission to improve the world’s health through food – which she acknowledges is a goal shared by many, but which she adds is executed poorly by most.
Bitewell rebrands as FoodHealth Company
Editor's note: On April 29, after this story was reported, Bitewell rebranded as FoodHealth Company and launched a new website at https://www.foodhealth.co/.
She explains this is due in large part because most measure healthfulness by calories, which she says is “the wrong number,” and because consumers do not have bandwidth to research every food or ingredient to find the best option.
“The mental load of trying to figure out how to eat well is so heavy and people who need guidance the most have the least time for carrying that mental load,” explained Alexander, citing the multitude of health marketing messages about protein, fiber, vitamins, calorie-counting and a return of “skinny culture.”
While there are many tools to help consumers eat better, including meal planning apps and food logging apps, “what consumers really need is help when they are standing in the aisle of a grocery store” trying to choose products that their family will eat but which is also healthy, she said.
“We have to solve this issue from two ends,” she explained.
“From a consumer perspective, we need to help consumers get educated about what healthy even means and how to make the right tradeoffs that take into account health, taste, price – all of the things that a shopper is thinking about when they are walking through a store,” she said.
“And then, from the other end, we need brands to improve the quality of their food, to meet consumers needs, because if I am looking for boxed mac and cheese, I am not going to switch from boxed mac and cheese to spending 45 minutes at home making my own. I just want to find a boxed mac and cheese that maybe is fortified with certain micronutrients so that I feel good about giving it to my kids, or has fewer ingredients, or whatever it is that I am looking for as a consumer,” she added.
A dual approach to improving health through nutrition
Bitewell - now the FoodHealth Company - can help with both, according to Alexander.
“We see ourselves as the data layer that powers the whole transformation,” she said.
From the consumer side, she explained, the company’s Food Health Score ranges from one to 100 and helps consumers understand what is the healthiest of the option they are viewing.”
The company also can help manufacturers and retailers in two ways: via marketing and advertising and through R&D.
In terms of marketing, Alexander said, the company can serve as a “matchmaker” between brands with healthier foods and retailers that want to highlight healthy options through in-store displays.
As for R&D, the company can help brands that are losing market share to competitors making health claims by analyzing the competitive landscape and pairing it with proprietary consumer research and market insights. These can serve as the basis for tweaking formulations of existing products or innovating new ones, said Alexander.
MAHA creates ‘urgency’ to innovate and renovate healthier foods and beverages
The urgency for innovating and renovating healthier products will increase in the coming years as the Make America Healthy Again initiative focuses a spotlight on the role of nutrition on health – illuminating for a new group of consumers concerns about food safety and quality, said Alexander.
She explained that a new consumer base that was not particularly well educated about food and nutrition before are now hearing about ingredients and food safety in the news and it is spurring them to look more closely at ingredient labels and food health claims.
“We have this new group of a large group of consumers who is becoming more educated and more discerning about what they put into their body, and I think there is a ton of urgency for brands around addressing that consumer group and not falling behind,” she said.
