The Great Reformulation: Why the Food and Beverages Industry Faces Its Most Complex Consumer Research Challenge Yet
A Sector at the Crossroads of Health, Sustainability, and Value
The global food and beverages (F&B) industry has always been a bellwether for broader social and economic forces, but the confluence of pressures it faces in 2024 is arguably unprecedented. The market, valued at over $8.9 trillion globally and growing at a projected CAGR of 5.1% through 2028 (Statista, 2024), is being simultaneously pulled in multiple directions: consumers demanding healthier formulations, regulators tightening ingredient and labelling standards, climate change disrupting agricultural supply chains, and inflation-weary shoppers making increasingly value-driven choices.
As someone who has spent over a decade advising F&B brands and conducting primary research in this space, I believe the industry is entering what I call the Great Reformulation Era — a period in which virtually every major food and beverage company is being forced to rethink its product portfolio, ingredient sourcing, and brand positioning simultaneously. And the market research implications of this are profound.
The Health and Wellness Imperative Is Not a Fad — It's a Structural Shift
Let's be clear about something that still generates debate in research circles: the consumer pivot toward health and wellness in food is not a passing trend. The data is unambiguous. According to Euromonitor International, the global health and wellness food market exceeded $1.1 trillion in 2023, and that figure does not capture the full extent of health-influenced purchasing in mainstream categories.
What makes this particularly complex for researchers is that health motivation is deeply heterogeneous. A 45-year-old with Type 2 diabetes managing glycemic load is making health decisions through an entirely different lens than a 22-year-old fitness enthusiast optimizing protein intake, or a mother of three trying to reduce her children's ultra-processed food consumption. Standard demographic segmentation is wholly inadequate here. Researchers need to move toward psychographic and behavioral health motivation segmentation models — approaches pioneered by companies like Ipsos with their food and nutrition segmentation frameworks, or Kantar's Health Mindsets tool.
The rise of GLP-1 receptor agonist medications (Ozempic, Wegovy, and their equivalents) adds yet another layer of complexity. Early research from Numerator and others suggests that GLP-1 users are showing measurable changes in food purchasing behavior — reducing portion sizes, shifting away from high-sugar categories, and gravitating toward protein-dense options. This is not a niche phenomenon: Morgan Stanley estimates that 9% of the US population could be on GLP-1 medications by 2035. For F&B researchers, building GLP-1 usage screening questions into standard omnibus surveys is no longer optional — it's essential for accurate category modeling.
Sustainability Claims Are Under the Microscope
Consumer skepticism about sustainability claims in food and beverages has reached a tipping point. The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the European Commission's Green Claims Directive are actively scrutinizing greenwashing in food packaging and marketing. Research from Edelman's Trust Barometer Food special edition found that only 34% of global consumers trust food brands' sustainability claims — a figure that has declined year on year since 2020.
This creates a fascinating and challenging research environment. Brands know that sustainability claims drive purchase intent in concept testing and pre-launch research — but the actual sales data post-launch frequently tells a different story, particularly when a premium price point is attached. This attitude-behavior gap in sustainable food purchasing is one of the most persistent methodological challenges in the sector.
In my view, the industry has been too reliant on stated preference research (surveys asking consumers what they say they will do) and not nearly rigorous enough in applying revealed preference methods (studying what consumers actually do). Retailers like Tesco, Carrefour, and Kroger hold extraordinarily rich loyalty card transaction data that, when combined with attitudinal survey data, can dramatically sharpen the picture. Researchers who are not actively pursuing data partnerships with retail platforms are leaving their most powerful analytical assets untapped.
The Ultra-Processed Food Debate: A Research Minefield
The emergence of NOVA food classification as a regulatory and public health framework has thrown a spotlight on ultra-processed foods (UPFs) that the industry is still scrambling to respond to. Following the Brazilian nutritionist Carlos Monteiro's development of the NOVA system, governments from Brazil to the UK are beginning to reference UPF content in dietary guidelines and — in some cases — regulatory proposals.
For F&B market researchers, this creates a significant challenge: how do you measure consumer understanding of and attitudes toward UPF classification when the concept itself is poorly understood by the general public? Research from the British Nutrition Foundation found that fewer than 30% of UK adults could correctly identify an ultra-processed food from a list of options. This means that standard survey questions referencing UPFs are measuring something closer to social desirability bias than genuine product knowledge or preference.
Opinion: The F&B research community needs to invest urgently in developing validated, consumer-literate ways of measuring UPF concern and avoidance behavior. We cannot simply transplant regulatory taxonomy into survey instruments designed for general population samples.
Innovation Pipeline Research: Getting Reformulation Right
Perhaps the most consequential research work happening in F&B right now is supporting product reformulation pipelines. Companies like Nestlé, Unilever, and PepsiCo are investing billions in reducing sugar, salt, and saturated fat content across their portfolios — often without wanting to flag these changes to consumers, for fear of triggering negative taste expectation effects.
The research challenge is profound: how do you measure consumer acceptance of reformulated products when you cannot disclose the reformulation? Blind sensory testing protocols, developed in partnership with sensory science institutions like the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), are essential here. Sequential monadic design, where respondents evaluate multiple product variants in randomized order, allows researchers to isolate the sensory drivers of preference without anchoring respondents to brand or label expectations.
What Needs to Change in F&B Market Research Practice
After a decade in this space, my core argument is this: the F&B research community has been too comfortable with traditional methodologies at a moment when the questions being asked of us are genuinely novel. We need greater investment in behavioral economics-informed study design, more rigorous integration of transactional and attitudinal data, and much deeper engagement with nutritional science and food policy communities.
The brands that will win the Great Reformulation Era are those with the sharpest, most honest consumer intelligence. And that intelligence will only come from researchers willing to challenge their own methodological assumptions as courageously as the industry is being asked to challenge its product portfolios.