Rising Health Consciousness: Food and Health

People – all over the world – are increasingly becoming health-conscious, figure-conscious and beauty-conscious. This has naturally given a great impetus on the Healthcare industry, but along with that, it has also affected the Food industry to a huge extent. People are consuming food stuffs that promise low-fat and low-calorie content. Popular snacks which contain high calories like potato chips, noodles, carbonated cold drinks, chocolates, ice-creams and the like are being discarded and are substituted by healthier foods. This has given many leading companies like Coca-cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Lays, Maggi, Kwality Walls et al a great setback. Hence, these firms are now coming up with healthier and tastier alternatives.

A recent study involving sixteen major companies, conducted by the Robert Wood Foundation, has showed that the average food consumption has seen a reduction of 6.4 trillion calories over the past five years! Now, that’s quite a remarkable leap. Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy, Center for Science in the Public Interest, says, “It’s great to see companies selling fewer calories and reformulating their products to reduce fat and sugar… A reduction of 78 calories a day is significant. The whole obesity epidemic can be explained by an extra 100 to 150 calories a day.”

In fact, new food companies have come up in the past few years that offer wonderful fat-free food products. Hillshire and Campbell’s are two such companies which have flourished in this transition phase of the Food Industry. To survive in this competition, famous pioneering industries are also picking up the cue. Coca-Cola has brought up the “Diet Coke”, Maggi has started “Multigrain Noodles” and Nestle has begun “Slow Churned” Edy’s and Dreyer’s ice creams.

Dietitian and nutritionist Chavanne Hanson, who serves as “wellness champion” at Nestlé USA, has said, “I see an evolution in the way consumers are looking at foods and beverages they purchase. That challenges us, which is great for us and great for society because of how important it is to address the issue of calorie balance and the concerns we have from a public health standpoint about obesity and weight.”

It has been observed that the sales of such food products have doubled up within a year. These products show higher growth and give the companies good reputation among the consumers. Thus, it is better for the food industry to understand the inter-relationship between healthy foods and greater profits.

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