Protein bars. Energy bars. Workout bars. Recovery bars.
Names like these have become staples of the booming functional snack bar category. But while brands have scrambled to amplify the health benefits a bar can offer in the context of fitness and workouts, there’s evidence that consumers have wider considerations in mind when choosing their preferred snack.
According to a recent Innova category survey, the nutritional claim that has the biggest influence on consumers’ choice of bar is protein content (27%). That certainly ties in with the emergence of protein bars as an important sub-category in its own right.
But more surprising is the fact that protein only came out top by a single percentage point. Tied in second place on 26% was low or reduced sugar and fibre content.
Fibre and nutritional bars of course have a long history. The broader category of cereal bars are by definition relatively high in fibre. But unlike protein, there hasn’t been a rush to brand such goods as ‘fibre bars’, or to bump up the nutritional fibre content with additives and make it a USP.
The Innova findings suggest such moves would be popular with consumers.
The fact that consumers rank fibre content all but on a par with protein when choosing functional bars is an indication of just how far public awareness around dietary fibre has come. As the science on fibre’s role in regulating gut health, and the gut’s broader impact on general health, has become increasingly well understood, consumer interest in fibre as a nutritional metric has risen rapidly.
A decade or so ago, dietary fibre was largely understood as a property of so-called ‘whole foods’. Getting enough fibre in your diet to keep your gut healthy was a matter of eating the right stuff - wholegrains, nuts, seeds, vegetables. The concept of additives chosen to increase the fibre content in general foodstuffs was at best very niche.
All of that has changed with the explosion of prebiotics. Prebiotics are, quite simply, forms of fibre which benefit the ‘good’ bacteria in your gut and therefore promote good gut health. Prebiotics can be used as additives to boost the fibre content of a wide range of food and beverage products. As such, prebiotics are one of the hottest trends in functional foods, with a market forecast to enjoy double-digit growth to 2030.
One example of a prebiotic functional additive is GOFOS, a vegetable-derived fibre with a flavour and nutritional profile that should make it ideal for the functional bars and snacks market.
GOFOS is a type of fructan known as a short-chain fructo-oligosaccharide (sc-FOS) - a complex carbohydrate naturally present in plants such as sugar beet, onions, asparagus, wheat, tomatoes and seaweed. Like all prebiotic fibres, oligosaccharides cannot be digested by the human gut, but are instead fermented by gut microbiota.
This means GOFOS adds zero calories to any product it is included in. But it also has the double benefit of being mildly sweet. As chains of fructose molecules, sc-FOS molecules are around 30% as sweet as regular sugar. So GOFOS can be added to bars and other baked goods to boost prebiotic fibre content and contribute to the desired flavour profile, without adding any calories.
Norkem stocks GOFOS in powder and liquid format, in 25kg bags for powder grade and drums, IBC’s or bulk road tankers for liquid grade. To find out more and discuss supply details, please submit a product enquiry or contact our food and drink sales team.