Food firms still missing big opportunity in seniors

Despite some ingredients firms like DSM taking a more targeted approach to elderly consumers, such as with its recent health claim associating vitamin D with a lower risk of falling in the elderly, it wasn’t enough.

That’s the opinion of Sjoerd Post, a marketing analyst at Innova Market Insights, who also said seniors were demanding more age-specific food and drink products.

Largest group ​

“In the future, the largest group of consumers will be seniors and not young people,”​ he told delegates at a Health Ingredients Europe conference in Amsterdam in December.

“Senior consumers these days are more active than their parents, they have more spending power than their parents and there are more of them than any other age group,”​ he added.

Functional foods, such as those with extra protein to help fight the onset of the muscle-wasting disease sarcopenia, were on elderly consumers' radars, but the demand was far from being met.

“Nearly 40% of seniors were looking for food that could help them be healthier,” ​said Post.

“They are aware that food can help with their health and this is a massive opportunity for food businesses to take advantage of.”​

Failing ​

Earlier in 2014, Diana Cowland, a senior analyst at Euromonitor, also said the food industry was failing to successfully target senior consumers.

“By 2018, 10% of the global population will be over the age of 65 and the products on offer​ [to them] remain very minimal and also very limited in terms of functional ingredients that are used,”​ said Cowland.

“One way to reinvigorate is to utilise the 70-plus functional ingredients to innovate in product type and format.”​