Improving recipes to meet consumer needs
Offer tastier and healthier food and drinks
A nutritious portfolio of products
Today, we focus on three categories: essential dairy and plant-based products, natural mineral water and soft drinks, and specialized nutrition. Since 2011, we have publicly disclosed the percentage of our products that can be qualified as part of a ‘healthy’ category. We also assess whether a product is ‘healthy’ using recognized standards such as the Health Star Rating (HSR), which has been in use at Danone since 2019.
*The Health Star Rating system assesses the overall nutritional profile of packaged foods and awards a rating from half a star to five stars. The more stars, the healthier the choice. At Danone, we have voluntarily decided to provide additional information about our products using the internationally recognized Health Star Rating system since 2019. We also use this system as a reference for our formal external reporting, as well as for our policies and position papers. The Health Star Rating system was developed based on the nutrient profile model of the UK Food Standards Agency and is supported by the independent Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN). The Health Star Rating has been selected by the global non-profit organisation Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNI) as one of the key global indices used to report on the nutritional performance of product portfolios. The Health Star Rating system takes into account the energy, saturated fat, sodium and total sugar content, as well as the fruit and vegetable content, fibre and protein in foods to rate products. In line with our health promise as part of the Danone Impact Journey to increase transparency in nutrition and enable consumers to make informed choices, we have decided to make this important information available online.
Reducing sugar and fat
By offering tasty and healthier foods, we can help tackle health problems caused by excessive consumption of added sugar, especially among children.
Product reformulations are therefore nothing new for us; they have been part of our ongoing product development for years. But even the best nutritional values are useless if consumers ultimately don't like the product. Our experience shows that they often do not go along with the ‘big step’ towards reducing sugar and fat. For example, consumers did not accept an Actimel product without sugar that was launched in 2012.
Reducing sugar and fat in several small steps is therefore more promising: in the case of FruchtZwerge, there were a total of ten steps over the years. Accordingly, we are moving step by step towards balanced nutrient profiles with less added sugar and fat in our products. For us, it goes without saying that we voluntarily reduce nutrients such as sugar and fat in line with scientifically based targets.
- Since the introduction of FruchtZwerge in 1981, the sugar content has been reduced by 37 per cent, the fat content by more than 68 per cent and the energy content by more than 44 per cent compared to the original recipe.
- The sugar content of Activia yogurts has been reduced by 17 per cent between 2015 and today.
- Between 2014 and 2019, we achieved an 18.6 per cent reduction in sugar content across the entire Alpro range.
- In the soft drinks sector, we have set ourselves the goal of offering products that contain less sugar than traditional soft drinks. Since 2020, none of our products contain more than 5 grams of sugar per 100 millilitres.
- In the area of early childhood nutrition, we are also constantly adapting our products to the latest scientific recommendations. In recent years, we have continuously revised our range of porridges and mueslis for babies and toddlers, so that today the vast majority of porridges and mueslis are free from added sugar*. In addition, we are striving to further reduce the overall sugar content.
*naturally contains sugar.
Maximum
10g sugar
We are working to reduce the total sugar content of our fresh dairy and plant-based products for children (aged 3–12).
