Sugar Reduction for Healthy Believers

Different peo­ple have dif­fer­ent rea­sons why they want to reduce their intake of sug­ar (if they want it at all). In this arti­cle, we will take a clos­er look at the rea­sons of those we described in two pre­vi­ous arti­cles as ‘healthy believ­ers’. We will once again meet the four sub-groups of healthy believ­ers and look at how their beliefs and ideals affect their pref­er­ences regard­ing sug­ar reduc­tion. But we start off with a short repetition.

What are healthy believers?

The con­cept of healthy believ­ers comes from the Global Gamechangers 2020 report made by the Healthy Marketing Team (HMT) con­sul­tan­cy and brand­ing agency. Together with researchers at Lund University, they have looked more close­ly at con­sumers who val­ue healthy food and drink – with an empha­sis on healthy. They are afflu­ent con­sumers, who can be divid­ed into four sub-groups based on their beliefs about health and what con­sti­tutes healthy food.

What drives them?

Healthy believ­ers are con­sti­tut­ed of four con­sumer groups:

• self-real­iza­tion consumers
• eth­i­cal consumers
• sci­en­tif­ic consumers
• tra­di­tion­al consumers

Their con­cep­tion of health and food is com­plex. It’s not just about a bal­anced diet and eat­ing some fruit and veg­eta­bles to keep the waist­line in check. No, their beliefs are also shaped by cul­ture, val­ues, pol­i­tics and iden­ti­ty creation.

The ques­tion is whether these beliefs also affect their views on sug­ar, sug­ar reduc­tion and sweeteners.

The self-realization consumer

The expe­ri­ence plays a big role for the self-real­iza­tion con­sumers. The emo­tions that come from a cer­tain expe­ri­ence deter­mine whether some­thing is good, or less good. Knowing and feel­ing flow into each oth­er and are equal for the self-real­iz­ing con­sumer. If sug­ar from coconut feels good and gives the right asso­ci­a­tions – well, then it is good.

They love to seek out and dis­cov­er new and unusu­al things. They strive for nat­ur­al prod­ucts, or at least what they per­ceive as natural.

When it comes to reduc­ing sug­ar, arti­fi­cial ingre­di­ents are regard­ed as the plague. Instead, they are look­ing for orig­i­nal­i­ty and puri­ty, which reflects that they are in a sense a fair­ly con­ser­v­a­tive group. It may feel new and unex­pect­ed, but the ingre­di­ents may be derived from some form of ancient tra­di­tion, wis­dom or mystery.

An exam­ple is the Swedish pas­try choco­late balls made accord­ing to the raw food ide­al where sweet­ness can come from dates. When an ancient and nat­ur­al ingre­di­ent meets an unex­pect­ed food, the result is per­ceived as excit­ing and innovative.

Typical ingredients for the self-realization consumer

Perhaps monk fruit is some­thing for the self-real­iz­ing con­sumer? The extract from Monk fruit is called mogro­sides, which are a sweet­en­er with nat­ur­al ori­gin and zero calories.

According to the leg­end, Buddhist monks start­ed to cul­ti­vate this fruit dur­ing the 13th and 14th century.

These monks were known as Luo Han, which also became the name of the fruit, which has since become, sim­ply – monk fruit.

This kind of ancient mys­tery is some­thing that fas­ci­nates and attracts the self-real­iza­tion consumer.

Monk fruit is not yet an approved ingre­di­ent in the EU but is expect­ed to be with­in a year.

The ethical consumer

The next group is the seg­ment with a great con­science. For these con­sumers, health is a vast con­cept that, in addi­tion to them­selves, also includes the entire plan­et and the well-being of humans and animals.

This view is also reflect­ed in the food they choose. They active­ly look for prod­ucts that clear­ly sig­nal good work­ing con­di­tions, con­cern for the envi­ron­ment and cli­mate, as well as the absence of ani­mal experiments.

It has also been found that con­sumers more than ever before care about the food pro­duc­tion chain with every­thing it entails in the form of col­lab­o­ra­tions and sub-suppliers.

A bag of jel­ly beans is com­pa­ra­ble to a small por­tion of pork when it comes to cli­mate impact, accord­ing to the Swedish Food Agency. This con­sumer group is well aware of this.

Arable land is occu­pied and rain­forests are destroyed to pro­duce sug­ar that humans does not real­ly need. There are clear incen­tives for the eth­i­cal con­sumer to reduce or exclude sugar.

But what can replace sugar?

Typical ingredient for the ethical consumer

Stevia is an inter­est­ing can­di­date for the eth­i­cal con­sumer. In addi­tion to being caloric-free and not affect­ing blood sug­ar lev­els, ste­via requires less soil, water and ener­gy to pro­duce the same amount of sweet­ness found in sug­ar. A study of the water and car­bon diox­ide foot­print for ste­via shows a reduc­tion in water con­sump­tion by 92 per cent and a decrease of the car­bon diox­ide foot­print by 82 per cent com­pared to sug­ar beets.

The cul­ti­va­tion of ste­via also cre­ates valu­able jobs for farm­ers in, for exam­ple, Kenya, China, Paraguay and Brazil.

The scientific consumer

The sci­en­tif­ic con­sumer is almost the oppo­site of the self-real­iz­ing con­sumer. It is not the emo­tions that are in focus but cold and uncom­pro­mis­ing facts. The sci­en­tif­ic con­sumer is also very result-ori­ent­ed and wants to see tan­gi­ble results of the choic­es and actions that he or she makes.

Therefore, when it comes to sug­ar reduc­tion, it can be about prod­ucts that are low in calo­ries and have no or lit­tle effect on blood sug­ar levels.

The sci­en­tif­ic con­sumer is a geeky con­sumer who glad­ly lis­tens to experts and spe­cial­ists. From the per­spec­tive of a food pro­duc­er – this is some­thing to behold since it cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties to explain prod­uct ben­e­fits on a detailed level.

At the same time, it can also be a dan­ger. You must not neglect com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This con­sumer group is awake and under­stands most things.

Typical ingredient for the scientific consumer

The sci­en­tif­ic con­sumer is result-ori­ent­ed and is often but not always a per­son with an active lifestyle. They look for the best prod­ucts dur­ing or after a demand­ing activ­i­ty such as marathons, cycling or an out­door day in nature. These activ­i­ties often require sup­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­tein, min­er­als and good car­bo­hy­drates, among oth­er things, to max­i­mize per­for­mance and recovery.

Various forms of sports drinks and sup­ple­ments are pop­u­lar, but what is avail­able if you do not want to sac­ri­fice sweet­ness – and at the same time get rid of unnec­es­sary calories?

Erythritol may be a solu­tion. Erythritol is a sug­ar alco­hol that is extreme­ly pop­u­lar in bev­er­ages. If you use ery­thri­tol in com­bi­na­tion with, for exam­ple, ste­via in a sports drink, you can get a prod­uct with zero calo­ries and no effect on blood sugar.

The traditional consumer

Finally we have the tra­di­tion­al con­sumers. They har­bour a dis­trust of the glob­al and large-scale. Instead, it is a small com­pa­ny, farm, or fac­to­ry that gets their atten­tion. It sim­ply feels more unadul­ter­at­ed and genuine.

This tar­get group enjoys food as it was intend­ed from the start. A ‘real’ sponge cake should con­tain ordi­nary, hon­est eggs, pure flour and clas­sic pow­dered sug­ar. It is there­fore con­ceiv­able that there is an inher­ent scep­ti­cism about all forms of sug­ar substitutes.

One might ask if it is mean­ing­ful to mar­ket sug­ar reduc­tion to this group. But there are rea­sons to do so. Even among tra­di­tion­al con­sumers, there are those who strug­gle with being over­weight or hav­ing prob­lems with blood sug­ar lev­els. They need to cut back on sug­ar but do not want to sac­ri­fice the tra­di­tion­al taste expe­ri­ence or sac­ri­fice the small-scale and genuine.

Typical ingredient for the traditional consumer

If we assume the premise that the con­sumer is a tra­di­tion­al­ist with some sort of med­ical con­di­tion, sug­ar reduc­tion becomes a nec­es­sary evil. This is a tar­get group that thinks that sug­ar has a right­ful place in food. It is there­fore impor­tant that the prod­uct is rem­i­nis­cent of its orig­i­nal coun­ter­part as much as possible.

It may require a sophis­ti­cat­ed com­bi­na­tion of many dif­fer­ent ingre­di­ents. Especially when it comes to com­plex sug­ar reduc­tion in, for exam­ple, pas­tries, ice cream and con­fec­tionery. Such a solu­tion may be sweet­ened fibres.

Make the right choice

As you notice, healthy believ­ers dif­fer when it comes to sug­ar reduc­tion. Winning everyone’s hearts at once can be hard not to say impos­si­ble. A bet­ter way is to choose one of the four sub­groups and then adapt the com­mu­ni­ca­tion accord­ing­ly.

And now what?

If you want to learn more about healthy believ­ers, read our arti­cles on them. If you want to learn more about the ingre­di­ents we use to reduce sug­ar, I rec­om­mend the two arti­cle series From seed to EUREBA and Sugar reduc­tion in prac­tice. And don’t for­get to sub­scribe to our mag­a­zine!