Amanda Baltazar08.26.10
Worldwide sales of children’s foods and beverages will rise to nearly $90 billion by 2015, according to a recent report, “Kids’ Food and Beverages: A Global Strategic Business,” from Global Industry Analysts, San Jose, CA.
Flooding the market are a plethora of healthy foods—organic, natural and fortified. These are designed to meet the demand that’s coming from better-educated parents who now have easy access to information about their children’s health in the media and on the Internet.
This interest parents take in their child’s nutrition peaks in the first five years of their offspring’s life, when they have complete control over it. After that, “I call it the lunch box syndrome, when the kids want what’s in other kids’ lunchboxes,” said Laurie Klein, vice president of Just Kid Inc. (to be renamed The Family Room this fall) a Norwalk, CT, market research company.
Organic baby foods are a big market in the U.S. According to the Nielsen Co., New York, NY, sales of these products for the year ended July 10, 2010, were nearly $77 million. Although those sales are down compared to this time last year, they’re substantially elevated from just three years ago, when the same products saw sales of about $55.5 million.
And Datamonitor in Canandaigua, NY, shows that about 14% of children’s foods launched between August 2009 and July 2010 had organic claims.
According to licensed dietitian Judy Converse, RD, parents are aware that the toxins in conventional food can be so much more harmful to babies’ and children’s tiny bodies, for which it’s an even greater burden, so organics make sense for this market.
Liane Weintraub and Shannan Swanson are aware of this and launched their company, Tasty Brand, Calabasas, CA, in 2007. Under this falls the brand Tastybaby, which is 100% organic, minimally processed and blast frozen food. Nothing is added to the foods, which include peach, squash and peas.
“Organic certification means that foods are in their purest forms and people are realizing that the fewer ingredients, the better. I’m proud of the fact that there’s one ingredient in our baby foods,” said Ms. Weintraub.
Atlanta, GA-based Jack’s Harvest jumped onto the same bandwagon in 2008. Its 100% organic, pureed baby food often has herbs or spices added to it.
When children know the flavor of real fruits and vegetables it starts them off on the route to good eating, pointed out Heather Schoenrock, a company founder. But what’s really behind her food is that it’s real, she said. “I just really believe in simple. That’s all I want to give. “
These foods are a good alternative if parents don’t have the time to make their own, said Tracee Yablon Brenner, RD, CHHC, co-author of Best Food for your Baby & Toddler. “Fresh is best but frozen is good. I believe it would be a good choice, especially when compared to the jarred.”
But it’s also in fortification that we’re seeing the huge increase in babies’ and children’s foods. The buzz words are pre- and probiotic, as well as DHA, ARA and vitamin D.
But what’s important is that the health claims be believable, said Ms. Klein. “There is a growing skepticism about foods that don’t naturally have [certain] ingredients in them,” she said. “It needs to link back to the inherent properties in the food. Vitamin C makes sense for Capri Sun, for example, but when they did antioxidants that wasn’t believable.”
Dan-o-nino yogurts, from Dannon, Allentown, PA, were launched earlier this year. They’re “power packed” (according to the packaging) with calcium and vitamin D, two nutrients that are inherent in yogurt so the product makes sense to consumers.
The company has focused on these nutrients, explained spokesman Michael Neuwirth, because it deems them among the most important. And, they’re often deficient in children’s diets after age five “as beverages other than milk and other dairy products start to creep into their diets.”
CoolJuice Beverage Company, Dunedin, FL, is creating fruit juices especially for children. Its four flavors are fortified with calcium, vitamins A, C and D3.
“Consumers now are so starved for time; they’re trying to cram so many things in, that if someone else can think of nutrition for them, it only helps,” pointed out Rachael Moore, vice president of marketing.
“A lot of kids aren’t getting the RDA of the fruits and vegetables they need so this is an easy solution if you have kids that don’t want to eat fruit.”
Tasty Brand also carries Tastybaby cereal, which is fortified with both DHA and ARA. Most other products on the market have one or the other, pointed out Ms. Weintraub.
“In recent years, this type of fortification has become something parents look for in baby cereals,” she added. “It has not become an industry standard—I suppose because the cost of fortified cereals is higher—but it is certainly a growing priority for consumers, and more and more manufacturers are adding DHA.
“When we created Tastybaby Organic Cereals, we wanted to make the Rolls Royce of infant cereals, so we did a lot of research and polled a lot of parents on what they were looking for.”
And for older children, there’s Tasty Brand Organic Fruit Snacks (gummies), which, “while they’re not nutritious, and don’t replace real fruits and vegetables, they do at least offer vitamin C and nothing harmful,” said Ms. Weintraub.
“We set out to create a snack, not a supplement, but when we researched other fruit snacks on the market, most made the claim that they contained vitamin C—many with 100% of the daily recommended allowance,” she pointed out. “Parents seemed to feel this was a significant selling point, so we included it in ours.”
Tammy Furman, founder of Original Smart Cookie, Miami Beach, FL, describes her products as “a better choice for a snack” since all-natural and fruits and vegetables constitute 10% of the ingredients in one ounce (one large cookie or three smaller ones).
“Children are not getting enough fruits and vegetables,” added her partner, Ronit Cohen Bentolila. “We’re just trying to expand the possibilities of kids getting nutrients from them. Most children don’t like vegetables in their natural state so we found a way to put them into cookies, which is something kids love to eat.”
Foods fortified with nutraceuticals are good for children, said Ms. Converse. “Public health data show that certain nutrients are bereft in the food supply. It does matter if we fortify certain foods; it will help. Some nutrients perennially come up as problems for kids: iron, vitamins A and C, and now of course everyone’s thinking about vitamin D.”
Moms feeding their kids fortified foods should be careful not to give their children too much of some nutrients, and perhaps the companies should be calling attention to this. Manufacturers should also let consumers know more about the quality of what the product is fortified with, said Ms. Yablon Brenner. “You have to make sure there’s no mercury in the supplementation. If [parents] don’t know the quality, that can be an issue.”
Parents really don’t know enough about this, which makes it a terrific opportunity to educate them through your products, said Melissa Abbott, trends and culinary insights director, The Hartman Group, Seattle, WA.
There’s very limited information about supplements such as DHA and ARA, she added. “There are consumers that think that FDA has approved everything so it must be OK.”
The market for healthy foods and beverages for children is likely to just keep growing, anticipated Ms. Abbott. As the market becomes more saturated, companies should use their packaging to stand out. She suggested playful packaging that’s not too scientific. “Don’t promise the world and be playful and aspirational. Suggest what these products can do.”
And of course the products are as much for the parents as the children, who can now feel better about feeding their offspring a nutritious feast of cookies, gummies and juice.
