What do health professionals want from food companies?
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.
How can food companies address a growing trend toward proper nutrition as a tool to prevent and/or treat chronic conditions? How can food companies adapt to a market landscape where a growing number of consumers may be taking weight-loss medications that suppress appetite, raise the stakes on nutrient density, and perhaps fundamentally alter their relationship with food?
These are important, nuanced questions with long-term impacts, and they are also ones we have been discussing with health professionals every day as we execute educational and promotional programs, or conduct marketing research interviews, or even simply correspond to address questions or requests.
The good news is that, at this point in time, when you ask health professionals these questions, the answer is simple–nutrition education.
Overwhelmingly, when we ask health professionals what food companies can do to best support them, particularly amid the growing food as medicine movement and increasing use of GLP-1 receptor agonists, they tell us that they want and need high-quality nutrition information and educational resources that they can use in counseling interactions with patients and clients.
Health professionals are looking for resources that help them address very specific needs, including
Helping patients and clients understand the basics of nutrition, and how meeting nutrients needs—whether that is protein, fiber, or key vitamins and minerals—and limiting intake of added sugar and sodium can benefit their personal health
Motivating patients and clients to make small, sustainable changes to their eating habits, see the impact those small changes can have, and then build momentum toward sustained change
Demonstrating practical ways patients and clients can incorporate healthier choices into busy, active lifestyles where convenience and attraction to the latest trend and/or a quick fix can distract them from meaningful change
Support countering the misinformation and pseudoscience that patients and clients regularly encounter online, through media channels, and from other untrustworthy sources
When health professionals articulate what these resources look like, they almost universally focus on four things: educational handouts that patients and clients can refer to after they’ve left the exam room, coupons that can mitigate the economic risk of trying a new food, product samples that help consumers overcome the perception that healthy foods don’t taste as good as less-healthy options, and recipes or practical tips for integrating healthier options into their daily routines.
What about changes to the products themselves, one might ask? Do health professionals want food companies to innovate products that are less highly processed with more protein, more fiber, less added sugar, and less sodium?
Of course. But they also understand consumer behavior. As one health professional recently told us during a research interview: “If they make a low-sodium version of mac n' cheese, many of my patients will just put salt on it.” Health professionals understand that nutrition education is the foundation of meaningful change in dietary habits for their patients and clients seeking to lose weight, manage cardiovascular health issues, prevent or treat type 2 diabetes, or simply live a healthier lifestyle.
The bottom line: among health professionals, there is not a perceived lack of healthy options for their patients and clients. There is a perceived lack of resources to educate consumers about these healthier options, and how they can integrate them into a balanced diet that satisfies and sustains them.