We get this question a lot. Our consumer packaged goods and commodity board clients want to understand how they can best meet the needs of health professionals–specifically in their efforts to help patients and clients lead healthier lifestyles.

As much as we’ve been helping clients answer this question for more than two decades, in an era of food as medicine and GLP-1 receptor agonists, we’re being asked this question even more frequently and with more urgency.

The quiver of health & wellness consumer marketing tactics is overflowing with arrows. There now exists a broad spectrum of approaches and tactics available.

But we have noticed something interesting happening over the past few years—companies moving to one extreme of that spectrum or the other, ignoring the approaches and tactics in the middle (which may just be the most effective of all).

While challenges linger for CPG food manufacturers, including supply chain issues, inflation, and record private label sales, marketers are rightly turning their attention to how best to engage consumers in a post-COVID 19 environment. Specifically, we are hearing much discussion about how to connect with health-conscious consumers in 2023 and beyond. The question being asked is, quite simply, does marketing health & wellness to consumers after the pandemic require a different approach?

For consumers, good taste is not enough. They demand that their foods do more. That they are nutritious, that they support their healthy lifestyles, and that the products they consume are made sustainably.

“Today, just taste is no longer enough,” says president of Unilever’s nutrition division, Hanneke Faber.

Food as medicine is a phrase and a concept that has been part of the health & wellness lexicon for many years now. But it appears that consumer demand is beginning to drive it to the forefront for food manufacturers.