As consumer preferences shift toward healthier indulgence, bakery manufacturers are turning to innovative ingredient solutions to balance taste, texture, and nutritional benefits. Kiran Grewal reports.
Today’s consumers demand more than just flavour from their bakery products—they want indulgence that also boasts nutritional benefits in one package. The transformation of the bakery aisle reflects this dual expectation, driven by a growing demographic of nutritious-conscious shoppers who carefully scrutinize the nutritional content of their purchases. Kennedy’s Bakery Production speaks to Ellie van der Burg, Cargill’s Bakery Marketing Manager, Cargill, to better understand how to navigate this demand:
New consumer research underscores this trend: 74% of bakery shoppers regularly check nutritional labels, with nutritional information ranking among the top three criteria influencing their buying decisions for cakes and pastries. While indulgence remains an essential purchase driver, there’s a rising preference for products offering improved nutritional profiles, sustained energy, and portion-controlled convenience.
For bakery manufacturers, this evolving landscape presents both challenges and opportunities. At Cargill, we’re leveraging our technical expertise and extensive ingredient portfolio to help customers create baked goods that align with modern consumer preferences, from enhancing Nutri-Score ratings to meeting demand for energy-boosting snacks.
Indulgence and nutrition
Bakery consumers increasingly seek products that satisfy cravings without compromising wellness goals. Cargill’s Sweet Delights research highlights this convergence, revealing a strong consumer desire for “indulgence without guilt.” Key trends like “Premium Indulgence” and “Guilt-Free Treats” illustrate the changing dynamic. Cakes, pastries, and brownies are no longer just indulgent—they’re becoming carriers of functional benefits, such as fibre or protein.
This shift is particularly evident as the Nutri-Score system gains traction across Europe. Introduced in France in 2017, Nutri-Score provides consumers with a quick, visual guide to a product’s nutritional value. Balancing elements like sugar, fat, and salt against the positive contributions of fibre and protein, Nutri-Score encourages more nutritious choices. Nearly half of European bakery consumers now consider Nutri-Score a key purchase factor.
For bakery manufacturers, the growing importance of Nutri-Score necessitates innovative approaches to product development. Reformulation often means reducing sugar, fat, and sodium while increasing fibre and protein content. Achieving this balance without compromising sensory appeal—taste, texture, and mouthfeel—requires a combination of cutting-edge ingredient solutions and application expertise.
Brownies: A case study in Nutri-Score innovation
Brownies exemplify the reformulation challenge. Traditionally, they fall into Nutri-Score categories such as D or E due to high levels of sugar and saturated fats. Yet, brownies also present a significant market opportunity. As one of the top five applications for bakery innovation, brownies have seen a 6% increase in new product launches from 2021 to 2023 and a 4% compound annual growth rate in value (Euromonitor, Innova Market Insights).
To demonstrate the possibilities, our applications experts have achieved what once seemed impossible through dedicated reformulation work. We have developed delicious brownie prototypes with significantly improved Nutri-Score ratings: Nutri-Score C with 30% sugar reduction, low sodium, and high fibre and even Nutri-Score A with 85% sugar reduction, low sodium, and high fibre. These options have been validated by our internal R&D and sensory experts, and consumer tests have confirmed their acceptance.
Our success in this area is underpinned by several key factors: a broad portfolio of ingredients to enable improved nutritional reformulation, deep technical expertise on ingredient functionality and application, holistic application expertise from concept to commercialization, and sensory insights to ensure our products meet consumer expectations for taste, texture, and overall enjoyment.
This breakthrough illustrates how reformulation can transform a classic indulgence into a better-for-you treat, meeting the needs of nutrition-conscious shoppers without losing its appeal.
Innovation across other applications
Cakes and pastries, the largest sub-category within sweet bakery, are an ideal space for innovation. These products lend themselves to reformulation, allowing manufacturers to experiment with combinations of indulgence and nutrition.
For example, pound cakes, muffins, and sponge cakes can be enhanced with plant-based proteins to appeal to consumers seeking added nutritional benefits. Meanwhile, sugar-reduction technologies, such as soluble fibres and maltitol, ensure these treats maintain their signature sweetness and texture. Nutri-Score improvements can also elevate these traditional baked goods.
Beyond Nutri-Score, another consumer-driven trend is shaping the bakery market: the quest for energy-boosting snacks. Modern consumers want baked goods that fuel their day without leading to a sugar crash. This demand aligns with broader interest in functional nutrition, where food serves as a source of steady energy or targeted health benefits.
Cargill’s Sweet Delights research highlights this trend, showing a preference for snacks that combine sustained energy release with reduced sugar content. Products like high-fibre muffins or protein-enhanced snack bars illustrate how functional ingredients can transform traditional bakery items into modern-day energy solutions.
To meet this need, we’re developing ingredient systems that support sustained energy release. Soluble fibres, for instance, slow digestion and promote a gradual release of energy, making them ideal for morning baked goods like breakfast biscuits. These innovations demonstrate how health-conscious baking can align with lifestyle trends, creating new opportunities for manufacturers.
The future of bakery: A holistic approach
The bakery industry is poised for significant evolution in the coming years, driven by consumer priorities like vitality, sustainability, and personalisation. Protein diversification, gut health, and clean-label formulations will likely become central themes in product development.
Cargill has developed its own practice of tracking and understanding signals of change over time to help shape and envision the future. As part of our Foresights Indulgence pilot, we developed category specific foresights for bakery, which demonstrate that as trust in big pharma wanes, consumers are looking instead to specific ingredients and benefits in real food and beverages that offer added functionality to address long term goals. 68% of consumers are interested in functional snacks with 30% citing baked goods, according to Kantar Profiles 2022. By incorporating recognized wellness ingredients, baked goods from cakes and brownies will be expected to meet these emerging demands.
At Cargill, we’re committed to supporting manufacturers through this transition. Our approach combines ingredient innovation, technical expertise, and a deep understanding of consumer trends. Whether it’s reformulating a classic like brownies or developing sustainable ingredient solutions, we’re helping brands thrive in a dynamic market.
By offering holistic solutions, Cargill says it is proving that nutritious, more sustainable baked goods can also be the most delicious. Together with their customers, they are shaping the future of health-conscious baking—one innovative product at a time.
A balancing act
Next, Kennedy’s Bakery Production speaks to Lin Peterse, Category Development Manager at Tate & Lyle, about the recent developments happening at the company to find the perfect balance between indulgence and health.
Many consumers are looking for ways to improve and maintain their health, with one key recommendation being to reduce sugar, and the associated calories, in their diet. However, consumers often struggle to balance making healthier choices, such as opting for reduced sugar products, with maintaining the great taste and mouthfeel experience they enjoy.
Tate & Lyle’s latest Bakery Digest, What’s driving growth in the European bakery market, found that 65% of young consumers would still purchase a product high in fat, salt or sugar if it also offered other benefits, such as being high in fibre or protein. In fact, two-thirds (67%) of consumers ranked additional nutritional benefits as a higher priority than sugar content (61%) or calories (56%).
This presents a challenge for bakery producers aiming to support healthier consumer diets while meeting growing expectations for healthier formulations. Reducing sugar, fat and calories – without compromising on the nutrients consumers increasingly seek, such as fibre and protein – is a delicate balancing act.
As such, there is a real opportunity for manufacturers to grow their sales if they can find the right formula that balances quality, mouthfeel and the functional benefits that consumers are looking for.
Reformulating products to reduce sugar, without losing the qualities that make them so loved by consumers, can be a difficult balancing act for manufacturers. In bakery, there are many sensory and technical aspects of products that need to be considered, such as sweetness, texture, bulking and mouthfeel – the physical sensations in the mouth when consuming of a food or drink item.
For example, when reducing sugar in a cake you could use Tate & Lyle’s HAMULSION® Stabiliser System that supports texture development and emulsification during processing and in the finished product. In cereal bars, fibres such as our PROMITOR® Soluble Fibre not only reduce sugar but also allow for a ‘high in fibre’ claim, meeting multiple consumer demands at once.
Manufacturers can also use fibres and starches, including clean label options such as CLARIA® Functional Clean-Label Starches, to build back mouthfeel and create lower calorie products without compromising taste or appearance. In creamy, bake-stable fillings, Claria® Functional Clean-Label Starches could provide a smooth, creamy and stable mouthfeel while being labelled simply as ‘starch’, appealing to consumers seeking recognisable ingredients.
Meanwhile, increasing regulations on the labelling, promotion and display of products high in fat, sugar and salt are a growing concern for bakery producers.
Reformulation impacts far more than taste – it influences mouthfeel, which can ultimately determine whether a product remains popular. A product may appear ‘cleaner’ or ‘healthier’ on the label, but if it doesn’t meet consumer expectations, the formulation may need to be revisited.
That’s why many bakery producers turn to formulation support from their ingredient providers.
Our PROMITOR® Soluble Fibre is a great example of an ingredient that supports great mouthfeel in sugar-reduced bakery products while also adding health benefits and improving nutrient density. Labelled as ‘soluble corn fibre’ in the UK and Germany, it’s just one of many Tate & Lyle solutions derived from natural sources that help manufacturers meet both functional and nutritional goals.
Ingredient solutions are playing a crucial role in helping manufacturers reformulate their products while maintaining taste, texture, and overall appeal. With advancements in sugar reduction, fibre enrichment, and protein fortification, companies like Cargill and Tate & Lyle are developing strategies to meet new market expectations. As health-conscious choices become more mainstream, the future of baking will likely continue to change, driven by a blend of technical innovation, regulatory considerations, and changing consumer priorities.
A new study conducted by researchers from Tate & Lyle PLC, a world leader in ingredient solutions for healthier food and beverages, and Creme Global LTD, a specialist data analytics company, reveals the substantial public health benefits that could be achieved when increasing the fibre content of food products commonly consumed by the Chinese population. Getting the right amount of fibre in the diet is highly beneficial for wider health and wellbeing, including immunity, skin, brain and gut health.
The study, the first-of-its-kind in China, has been published in BMJ Open, a peer-reviewed open access medical journal. It demonstrates that fortifying foods and drinks like flavoured dairy and non-dairy products, bread, and fermented sauces and pastes, notably improves the fibre intake among both adults and children, significantly reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD).
The study’s main finding is that fortifying commonly consumed foods with fibre could help 48% more adults and 54% more children to reach the recommended daily fibre intake, meaning that 10% of adults and 22% of children in China would consume the recommended amount of fibre each day. The Chinese Nutrition Society recommends that adults consume 25g-30g of fibre per day. A widely used recommendation for children is their age in years plus 5g of fibre per day, so, for instance, a three-year-old should consume at least 8g of fibre each day.
Dr. Davide Risso, Head of Nutrition Research at Tate & Lyle and a co-author of the modelling study, commented: “A 48% increase in adults and 54% increase in children reaching the recommended daily fibre intake is significant when you consider that intake rates have been climbing very slowly in many countries. Fibre fortification, which many food and drink companies are already actively pursuing, and which requires minimal consumer behaviour change, presents a significant public health opportunity in China, complementing existing health interventions.”
This is the very first study to model the public health benefits of fibre fortification in China, providing compelling evidence for the potential health gains. The researchers encourage more food and beverage producers to consider fibre fortification as a viable strategy to enhance public health, reduce the burden of chronic diseases, and meet growing consumer interest in fibre-fortified food and drinks.
