While bread bakers work to leverage the latest trends and reach more health-conscious Americans, bakers of gourmet snacks and more decadent products can easily fend themselves from the wellness wave with the simple argument, “Consumers want cookies to be cookies.” Ain’t that the truth.
When it comes to cookies, brownies, muffins and other treats, people will not sacrifice taste for nutrition. Heck, why waste good calories on mediocre products?
“If the cookie does not taste good or if there are taste tradeoffs that are being made to deliver a more ‘healthy’ cookie — consumers will not come back to the product,” Phil Singh, associate director, Cookies and On-the-Go Innovation, Kellogg Co., Battle Creek, Mich., told Baking & Snack recently.
Cookie and other sweet goods producers, however, can meet the health and wellness movement halfway by incorporating fortification and other natural ingredients into their products just in case the trend finally washes over indulgent snacks and desserts. Healthy may have a halo but taste is king.
