According to a recent survey by Innova Market Insights, nuts have become an important ingredient and now are being combined into new snacks by taking more and more forms, tastes and matching ways. With the increasing consumer demand on both delicious and nutritious snacks, the snack industry, including chocolate products and cereal bars, will turn its eyes on all kinds of nuts and continue to create different products to meet consumer demand. In the trend of this development, nuts play an important role in global snack consumption.

Cereal Bars Snacks to Strengthen Health Claim

The survey of Innova Market Insights shows that, in the past five years, new products of the global cereal bars snacks have been introduced, with a substantial increase of 80% in the product quantity. As consumers have increasing demand on convenient and nutritious snacks which can substitute staple food, the health of snacks has become the latest topic concerned by consumers and industry insider. The impact of this health concept on the new product labeling of snack is very clear. According to the survey, over 82% of new products will take “health” as a brand positioning; 20% of those will be labeled using “simple label”, mainly representing pure natural and organic products certification or the statements such as no additives and preservatives.

Nuts Cereal Bars Are Popular

With the universal attention to the health of industry, nuts which are rich in nutritional ingredient are ideal for cereal bars category. Meanwhile, as more and more consumers are seeking healthy snacks to meet their active lifestyles, the application of nuts in the healthy snack will get more promotion. In the new cereal bars which take the Badam as ingredient, about 25% use the “simple label” as the product labeling. Marketers will no doubt take advantage of distinctive visual effects and clearly mark the nut category on the packaging, which make the branding of healthy cereal bar products. Data show that 27% of new cereal bars have focused on the promotion of that of containing nuts, including 11% of new products with Badam, leading other nuts.

Chocolate with Nuts are Constantly Innovated

Nuts have always been an important ingredient of chocolate products. In 2014, in the global new chocolate products, chocolate with nuts accounted for 36% of new products. As in previous years, Badam is still the nut which is most frequently used in the chocolate; in the new chocolate products launched in 2014, 13% use Badam as an ingredient.

According to reports, although consumers’ taste preferences in different regions are different, Asia is still a major region to promote Badam chocolate products. Although the classic combination of Badam and chocolate continues to grow rapidly, more new combinations are emerging, such as high-end dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate, as well as the unique ingredients such as fruit. The ways in which the ingredients blended in chocolate are constantly innovated. For example, Badam had only appeared in the form of whole one in the chocolate, but now there are Badam chip, strip, slice and sauce. New processing methods, such as caramelization, pan-firing (manual batch cooking method) etc., have also been put into the market. Nuts, as the key ingredient for important snack products, has a variety of innovative ways to highlight the product features, which help leisure products stand out in the increasingly fierce market competition.