72% of Consumers Prefer 'Naturally Low' Products — What This Means for F&B Product Development

TL;DR:
According to Mintel’s 2025 Better For You Eating Trends research 72% of US consumers prefer products that are naturally low in sugar, salt, and fat over those that use artificial ingredients to achieve the same result. With 93% of consumers either maintaining or increasing effort toward their diet and 55% actively limiting certain foods, F&B manufacturers face a clear mandate: reformulate toward naturally lower nutritional profiles — or risk losing shelf space to competitors who do. This requires formulation management systems that can handle ingredient substitution at scale while maintaining taste, regulatory compliance, and speed to market. 

Why Are Consumers Rejecting Artificially Reformulated Products?  

For decades, the food industry's answer to health-conscious consumers was straightforward: replace the offending ingredient with a substitute. Sugar became aspartame. Fat became olestra. Sodium became potassium chloride. The nutrition label improved, the product stayed familiar, and the consumer was expected to be satisfied.

That playbook is broken. Mintel's 2025 Better For You Eating Trends data reveals a consumer base that has moved well beyond artificial substitution. 72% of US consumers now prefer products that are naturally low in sugar, salt, and fat — not products that have been reformulated with alternatives. 40% define 'better for you' as containing no additives or preservatives, and 37% want simpler, more recognizable ingredients. The shift is not subtle: consumers now associate 'reformulated' with 'processed.'

This skepticism has real roots. High-profile controversies around artificial sweeteners, consumer confusion over 'natural flavors' that aren't derived from the named ingredient, and a generation raised on ingredient-list literacy have created a market that reads labels with informed distrust. When a yogurt claims to be 'sugar-free' but lists four unfamiliar sweetener compounds, today's consumer doesn't see a health food — they see a chemistry experiment.

For F&B manufacturers, this consumer sentiment creates a formulation challenge that is fundamentally different from previous reformulation cycles. Consider reformulating a breakfast cereal to be naturally lower in sugar while maintaining taste, texture, and shelf life. This isn't a matter of swapping one sweetener for another — it requires testing 15–20 ingredient combinations, each with different nutritional profiles, different regulatory implications across markets, and different impacts on manufacturing processes. The complexity is exponential, not linear.

What Does 'Naturally Low' Actually Require from F&B Product Development Teams?  

The distinction between 'reduced' and 'naturally low' is not semantic — it is structural. 'Reduced sodium' means the same recipe with less salt or a sodium substitute. 'Naturally low sodium' means a fundamentally different recipe where the ingredients themselves contribute less sodium. One is subtraction. The other is reinvention.

Mintel's data reinforces why this distinction matters to consumers: 53% define 'better for you' as containing quality ingredients, and 65% say nutrition facts are very or extremely important in their purchase decisions. Consumers are not just reading labels — they are evaluating whether the ingredient list matches the brand's health promise. A 'naturally low sugar' granola bar that lists maltitol and erythritol fails that test, regardless of its nutritional profile.

For product development teams, 'naturally low' changes every stage of the workflow. Take a concrete example: reformulating a pasta sauce from 'reduced sodium' to 'naturally low sodium.' The 'reduced' version simply replaced a portion of table salt with potassium chloride — a single ingredient swap that required minimal reformulation. The 'naturally low' version requires an entirely herb-forward recipe built from the ground up. That means:

New ingredient sourcing — identifying herb and citrus suppliers that meet food safety and volume requirements.

Multiple recipe iterations — balancing flavor, acidity, and mouthfeel without relying on sodium as a taste amplifier.

Nutritional recalculation — every ingredient change alters the full nutritional profile, not just sodium.

Label redesign — updated nutrition facts, ingredient lists, and potentially new front-of-pack claims across every market.

Regulatory review — what qualifies as 'low sodium' under FDA nutrition labeling requirements differs from the thresholds in EU food information regulations. A claim that's compliant in one market may be non-compliant in another.

Packaging updates — new allergen profiles may require different packaging materials or production-line segregation.

Each of these steps generates data, decisions, and dependencies. When they happen in disconnected systems — formulation in one tool, regulatory review in email, labeling in a design application — the risk of errors, delays, and misalignment multiplies with every SKU.

How Is the GLP-1 Trend Accelerating Reformulation Demand? 

The consumer shift toward naturally lower nutritional profiles is not happening in isolation. It is being amplified by one of the most significant pharmaceutical trends in a generation: GLP-1 receptor agonists.

Mintel's 2025 data shows that 14% of consumers actively improving their diet have started a GLP-1 appetite suppressant. That is not a niche — it represents millions of consumers whose food purchasing behavior is fundamentally changing. GLP-1 users eat less volume but need more nutritional density per serving. The same research shows 53% of health-active consumers are focusing on protein, 51% are watching portions, and 40% are prioritizing fiber. These are not separate trends — they are converging into a single product development brief: protein-dense, fiber-rich, portion-controlled products that deliver maximum nutrition in smaller servings.

For F&B manufacturers, the GLP-1 effect does not mean creating a new 'GLP-1 friendly' product line and moving on. It means reformulating existing portfolios. A snack bar brand whose core consumer base starts on GLP-1 medications needs to simultaneously develop smaller portion sizes (new packaging specifications), higher protein formulations (new recipes and new ingredient sourcing), fiber fortification (new functional ingredients with different regulatory profiles), and updated nutritional labeling — across their entire product range. This is not sequential. It happens in parallel, across dozens of SKUs, under competitive time pressure. 

The manufacturers who capture this market will not be those with the best single reformulation. They will be those whose product development infrastructure enables simultaneous multi-SKU reformulation with integrated regulatory compliance for food manufacturers — from formulation through labeling through launch. 

What Does This Mean for F&B Manufacturers' Product Development Infrastructure? 

The gap between what consumers demand — naturally low, clean label, protein-rich, portion-controlled — and what most F&B manufacturers can deliver at speed is not an innovation gap. R&D teams know what products consumers want. It is an infrastructure gap. The ability to move from consumer insight to compliant, shelf-ready product across multiple markets and regulatory frameworks is constrained by how product development workflows are structured. 

When formulation happens in one system, regulatory review happens in email, labeling happens in a design tool, and market-specific compliance is managed in spreadsheets, every reformulation project becomes a coordination challenge before it becomes a product development challenge. A single ingredient change in a pasta sauce cascades into nutritional recalculation, claim revalidation, label updates, and packaging review — across every market where that product is sold. Without a connected workflow, these cascading changes are managed manually, and manual coordination is where delays, errors, and compliance risks live. 

Product lifecycle management software that connects formulation, regulatory compliance, and labeling in a single workflow is how manufacturers close this infrastructure gap. When a formulation change automatically triggers nutritional recalculation, flags regulatory implications per market, and updates labeling templates in the same system, the reformulation cycle that takes months in disconnected tools takes weeks. The manufacturers who operate at that speed are the ones converting consumer demand into shelf-ready products while competitors are still reconciling spreadsheets. 

Companies like Barilla, Ocean Spray, and Perfetti Van Melle are navigating exactly this complexity — managing reformulation across global markets, multiple regulatory frameworks, and hundreds of SKUs simultaneously. The scale of the challenge they face is the same scale that Mintel's data says every F&B manufacturer must now be prepared to address. 

As independent PLM research from CIMdata confirms, product lifecycle management is becoming the critical enabler of both brand integrity and agility in consumer goods — the mechanism through which manufacturers maintain product quality and regulatory compliance while accelerating time to market. For F&B companies facing the 'naturally low' mandate, that combination of integrity and agility is no longer optional. It is the baseline for competitive relevance. 

Frequently Asked Questions 

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See how PLM software for food and beverage manufacturers connects formulation, regulatory compliance, and labeling in a single workflow — so your team can reformulate at the speed consumers demand. 

About Trace One

With more than 30 years of industry expertise, Trace One partners with over 9,000 brands across food and beverage, cosmetics, and chemicals to accelerate product development and turn regulatory complexity into a competitive advantage. Our AI-powered PLM platform, with regulatory intelligence spanning 170+ countries, supports the entire product manufacturing lifecycle — helping brands bring market-leading products to shelf faster and thrive in new markets. Learn more at traceone.com.