Free-from Products Riding High

February is turning out to be a banner month for better-for-you products.

Mighty Mondelez International announced that it’s acquiring Enjoy Life Foods, the successful maker of allergen-free snacks. Nestle USA declared it would be removing the artificial flavors and colors from its iconic candy brands and, not long after, Hershey affirmed its commitment to simple ingredients. And snack giant Snyder’s-Lance created a new division, Clearview Foods, to focus on healthy products.

Among retailers, Wegmans announced it’s making healthy snacks a priority in 2015, Supervalu is refreshing the image of its Wild Harvest brand of free-from products, and Whole Foods is enlisting the talents of a renowned children’s author to get kids jazzed up about its private brand healthy cereals.

Meanwhile, the latest Market LOHAS MamboTrack Research Survey revealed that today’s health-seeking shoppers are prioritizing “values” over “value” by choosing brands based on key product and ingredient factors over cost and other drivers. 

As PG’s Meg Major wrote in a recent online column, brand choice for healthy-minded shoppers is being increasingly driven by taste and healthy product factors, including ingredients and non-GMO, ahead of organic in purchase priority for the second year in a row, according to the study. All-natural products are also losing cachet, and price is becoming less important to conscious consumers.

In addition, PG looks at how retailers can capitalize on all this momentum in its latest “free-from” report, in its soon-to-be-released March 2015 issue.

And it’s all happening in the run up to the next Natural Products Expo West, which runs March 4-8 in Anaheim, Calif. I’ll be there to bring you the latest product news; follow me on Twitter – @jimdudlicek – for from-the-floor reports.