Current and emerging trends in cereal snack bars: implications for new product development

Abstract

The change in consumers’ lifestyle promoted “snackification” favouring the commercialisation of on-the-go products such as cereal bars (CBs). Manufacturers are encountering challenges to develop healthy, natural, tasty, and affordable CBs. This article focuses on production methods, the current and emerging market trends, and practical implications for developing new CBs. The future of the CBs industry is associated with finding the right balance between nutritional value, sensory attributes, naturalness, and sustainability. Manufactures have a toolbox with a large portfolio of ingredients and processing techniques to develop CBs that can be a meal substitute, a supplement, or a snack.

Keywords:

• Snacking
• cereal bars
• healthiness
• naturalness
• sustainability
• innovation

Disclosure statement

Michelle Klerks and Luisma Sanchez-Siles are members of the Research & Nutrition department of the Hero Group. All other authors do not declare potential conflict of interest.