48|Retail News|May 2020|www.retailnews.ie
Healthy Options
Eating healthily amid the pandemic
Consumers are being reminded to eat healthily during the current pandemic. YOU cannot pick up a newspaper or open a website without seeing headlines like ‘How to stay healthy in a lockdown’, ‘Tips to stay healthy while cocooning’ or ‘Making healthy food choices in a pandemic’. Consumers are purchasing more from grocery stores than they have ever done, as evidenced by the latest figures from Kantar and Nielsen (see our news report on Page 4), but are they buying and eating healthily? There are certainly more shoppers than ever before taking the time to cook meals from scratch, which is a good sign, and home baking has exploded in popularity, although plenty of indulgent treats like ice cream and frozen desserts have also skyrocketed. Pre-pandemic, the health and wellness trend was deeply embedded in our collective psyche, as Irish consumers were happy to spend more on products that are slightly more expensive as they deem them to be good for their health, according to the Euromonitor report into Health &
Wellness in Ireland from January of this year. The 2018 introduction of the tax on sugar-sweetened drinks led to an intensive debate on the health state of the Irish population, with obesity levels coming into sharp focus. This, combined with a growing economy, meant that the health and wellness sector continued to grow. Consumers in Ireland are actively reducing their sugar and salt intake, as well as cutting back on processed foods, according to Euromonitor’s report into ‘Better For You Packaged Food’. Many food manufacturers, including mainstream chocolate companies, have been increasingly eager to reduce the sugar content of their products, with private label also reformulating products to reduce sugar and salt content. Quite what effect the current pandemic will have on long-term shopping patterns and trends is unclear, but one would hope that consumers’ desire to eat healthier is ingrained into our hardware by now.
Benecol Benecol have been helping people all over the world enjoy eating healthily for nearly 25 years. It all started with Ingmar Wester, a Finnish scientist who knew that plant stanols reduce cholesterol by partly blocking its entry to the bloodstream. After years of
The unique plant stanols of Benecol partially block cholesterol from getting into your bloodstream.
