Greggs rises to the salt-reduction challenge

High street bakery retailer Greggs hopes that radical new product reformulation technologies it is working on will help it meet tough new nutritional targets for salt, sugar and fat being proposed by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), while not adversely affecting the taste of products.

Giving the Society of Food Science and Technology’s annual lecture last week, chief executive Ken McMeikan disclosed that Greggs was working on changing the composition of its products to improve their nutritional profile. If the work proves successful, said McMeikan, it would help Greggs achieve the FSA’s stringent new salt reduction targets for 2012 without impacting on taste.

However, he warned that this would only be possible if acceptable taste profiles could be achieved. “From a product development point of view, we have got some of the very best brains in the UK working at Greggs. In the bakery world we are at the leading edge in terms of some of the things we are doing.”

He added: “Some of the things we are doing in terms of reducing salt we haven’t even made public yet, and we are not ready to do so.”

McMeikan stressed that the biggest challenge facing the sector in meeting the FSA’s 2012 salt reduction targets was probably avoiding putting customers off with inferior-tasting bakery products.

“So our challenge at the moment is how to actually meet all the targets that are being put in place without impacting on the quality of what the customer experiences.”