FDBusiness.com

Nestle has assessed products worth SFr36.4b (Eur29.7b) in total sales with consumers over the past three years as part of its global strategy to enhance nutritional value while improving taste. The company’s 60/40+ programme – the largest of its kind ever to be deployed in the industry – firstly requires at least 60% of a large consumer sample to prefer the Nestle product in a blind taste test against its direct competitors.

Secondly, where relevant, it requires the product to offer an additional nutritional ‘plus’, based on criteria recommended by world-renowned nutrition and health authorities, as well as on local public health and regulatory priorities.

Sanjay Sehgal, head of Nestle’s Corporate Wellness Unit, explains how 60/40+ underpins the Company’s worldwide approach to product development. “We employ the 60/40+ programme to deliver on both taste and nutrition. Since it began, more than half a million consumers have helped to shape our products by participating in testing.”

He continues: “From 2003 onwards, Nestle was the first company in the food industry to put comprehensive policies in place for the systematic reduction of specific nutrients that are considered to be detrimental to health when consumed in excess, and also to offer consumers more essential nutrients or nutritious ingredients. We are committed to doing this without compromising on taste. We strongly believe that nutrition must also be pleasurable if it is to be enjoyed as part of a healthy balanced diet.”

As a result of 60/40+, and through its nutrition policies, Nestle has reduced trans fatty acids, salt, sugar and saturated fats in products across its worldwide food and beverage portfolio, while offering consumers healthier options.

Each year, Nestle selects a range of products across its 18 food and beverage categories for 60/40+ assessment, prioritising best-sellers and new innovations about to be launched in order to maximise its impact on consumer health.

The company then focuses its advertising on those products which score highly in testing, to ensure they are made visible to consumers in a specific market.

In 2010, the range of new product innovations launched as result of 60/40+ included the iron, iodine, and vitamin A-fortified Maggi Masala-ae-Magic spice mix in India, developed to provide lower income consumers with a low cost but nutritious spice mix to add to meals.