Plant-based has been the big buzz-term in food and beverage for well over a year now. With meat and poultry analogs leading the way, we split the topic into two features.

According to the International Food Information Council’s 2020 Food & Health Survey, 85% of Americans have made at least some change in the food they eat or how they prepare it because of the coronavirus pandemic. Do we expect consumers to return to pre-pandemic behaviors?

Understandably, it hasn’t been the best time for CPG food and beverage processors to unveil new products to retail customers or their consumers. Yet it doesn’t have to bring an end to strategic innovation—involving insights, ideation or product development. 

June is Men’s Health Month, and June 10-16 is designated as Men’s Health Week. It’s not quite certain how we guys landed both a week and a month at the same time, but it probably has to do with the need to be told to do something more than once. In this case, it’s needing to be nagged to take care of ourselves.

By the time I finish writing this sentence, I imagine another industry trade show will have been cancelled. In my 20 years of covering the food and beverage industry, I have never witnessed such widespread disruption to business. I don’t believe any among us have been left unaffected by the current crisis.

I am inviting all food and beverage processors to tell us about your new product achievements and enter Prepared Foods’ upcoming 18th annual Spirit of Innovation Awards.

Happy National Nutrition Month! I use this bully pulpit often to decry the persistent plague of rampant – and often nefarious – nutrition miscommunication.

Consumers believe plant based foods are more sustainable than those made from meat, and the industry is responding accordingly.

This month, I’d encourage industry professionals to pause, reflect and resolve to enhance your brand’s relationship—it’s emotional appeal—to those same consumers. Why? More shoppers are making pointed, conscious decisions to buy—or not buy—based on a growing list of factors.

It can’t be stated more directly nor with any greater emphasis: The food and beverage makers of the future — already working hard at this, by the way — are going to have to double down on the delivery of responsibly made (and marketed) products for the global consumer, whether planning for the 2020s or all the way to 2100.