Convenience Foods: Providing Healthier Options
Convenience foods are an accepted part of daily life in the United States. The 2024 market revenue is estimated at US$51.30 billion – an average of 17.2kg in volume per person – and is predicted to increase by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.36% into 20291.
The segment’s status and growth are thanks to several factors. These include increasingly stressed and time- and energy-poor consumers, flavor preferences, fresh produce, and food deserts. It also involves perceptions of the effort and cost associated with healthier, home-cooked options. The upward trend is driven above average by younger consumers, higher-income consumers, and an increase in consumers eating alone2.
What Are Convenience Foods?
The convenience foods category includes preprocessed products that make preparation and consumption easier and quicker with optimized taste. It encompasses ready-to-eat, takeout and ready-to-heat meals, pre-prepared canned and jarred meal components, cold cuts, cheeses, and products packaged to go, such as pastries, chocolates, cookies, and candies.
Convenient—yes. Tasty—yes. Healthy—typically no. Most convenience foods are exceedingly processed in ways that may reduce inherent product health benefits. They usually include unhealthy sugar and sodium levels, preservatives and other unnatural or harmful additives.
With the recent pandemic and its lockdowns necessitating an increase in at-home food preparation and the continuing work-from-home trend, more than one in every two (54%) consumers report still cooking at home in at least half of their meal occasions3. This shift is also a way of managing budgets in two out of three cases and in response to a continuing consumer emphasis on conscious choices and healthier, low- or no-tox ingredients.
Convenience Is In; So Is Health
One in two (49%) consumers report healthiness as an essential buying consideration4. More than half are willing to pay more for fresh products, with close to one in five (18%) rejecting convenience foods that don’t contain freshly prepared ingredients5.
While the demand for more natural, less processed food products is growing, the desire and need for ease and convenience remain, as do budget constraints. Consumers also continue to demand novel flavors and food experiences6. What do these drivers mean for convenience food manufacturers?
Responding to the Demand for Healthier Convenience Foods
Many convenience foods are already healthful. These include nuts, fresh and preserved fruits, and pre-prepared salads. Additionally, 59% of consumers use pre-prepared fresh produce as part of scratch-cooked dishes. These home cooking shortcuts include precut fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables and combining homemade and frozen main and side dishes.
Producers can build on this preference by freshly preparing or freezing pre-made snacks and ready meals made from healthier, more natural, nutritious, and less processed ingredients. They can also accommodate and market for more convenient, efficient, and healthier cooking and heating devices, such as air fryers (45%) and slow cookers (43%)7.
Beyond embracing fresher, healthier components and reducing or avoiding additives and secondary or tertiary processing, producing high-quality convenience foods rely on responsibly sourced, natural flavor and odor ingredients.
Source 100% Natural Taste and Aroma Ingredients From Advanced Biotech
Your convenience foods product can be ready-to-eat, delicious, and healthy. It need not contain harmful levels of salt, sugar, or fats. Instead, create the flavor your consumers crave and expect with Advanced Biotech’s 100% natural and EU-certified flavor and odor ingredients.
Support healthy lifestyles and snacking with our extensive range of pure, documented, plant-based, and often certified organic tastes and aromas. Add safe and concentrated layers and depth to your food, beverage, or frozen flavor and odor profiles with Advanced Biotech’s innovative distillates, oleoresins, pyrazines, thiazoles, and other natural extracts. Contact us today.
1 https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/food/convenience-food/united-states
2,5 https://www.innovamarketinsights.com/trends/consumer-trends-global-convenience-eating/
3,4,6,7 https://progressivegrocer.com/cook-home-behaviors-becoming-dominant-report