The unlikely hero: how vegetables help manufacturers do more with less
Food manufacturers are under pressure from every angle – rising costs, tighter regulations, supply volatility and increasing consumer expectations around health, clean label and sensory experience. Consumers want products that feel healthier, more natural and more exciting, while still delivering on taste, texture and consistency. And preferably at a price point that still works for everyone. It’s a difficult balance to strike.
Vegetable ingredients can help manufacturers respond to these evolving demands through natural colour, flavour, nutritional appeal and versatile application potential. And when backed by strong supplier expertise and reliable sourcing, they can also help bring greater confidence and consistency into formulation decisions. Read on to find out why vegetables deserve a more central role in how today’s food challenges can be solved.
Spinning plates
It’s been a melting pot of pressures in the food industry recently. Raw material costs are fluctuating due to rising energy costs, geopolitical conflicts and climate change – making long-term planning increasingly challenging. While regulatory frameworks like HFSS classifications and front-of-pack labelling systems such as Nutri-Score are causing manufacturers to rethink formulations from the ground up – and causing headaches at the same time. Consumers, meanwhile, are becoming more demanding, wanting products that are healthier, “cleaner” and more exciting.
The tricky part is that most reformulation scenarios result in compromises. Trying to improve your product’s Nutri-Score positioning might affect taste. A cost-saving ingredient swap might compromise the clean label story. And getting nutrition, flavour, cost, compliance and consumer appeal to work together? That’s the real challenge for R&D teams. Manufacturers are increasingly looking for ingredients that can help address several of these challenges at once — without creating new ones elsewhere.
Reframing regulations
HFSS and Nutri-Score are often talked about as a burden – another layer of complexity to design around. But they could actually present a way to shake up your product portfolio – in a good way. Vegetable-led formulation in categories like soups and sauces, savoury snacks and ready meals can move product development in the right direction under both frameworks, and often without a radical overhaul.
Vegetables can help manufacturers improve the nutritional profile of products while also contributing colour, flavour and consumer appeal. In applications such as sauces, soups and ready meals, ingredients like kale, pumpkin or tomato purees can support reformulation efforts, help improve Nutri-Score outcomes — a front-of-pack indicator of nutritional quality — and enable brands to respond to evolving nutrition expectations without fundamentally changing the product. HFSS classifications work similarly, whereby products are assessed against criteria for fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt per 100g. Vegetables, with their naturally low levels across all four, can help dilute the overall nutritional profile of a product to achieve a better score. More importantly, they do so in a way that’s transparent and credible on the label. So, for consumers who already understand and trust veggies, it’s a more believable story.
Looking ahead, investing in vegetable-led reformulation now could leave manufacturers better positioned for whatever comes next. Because regulatory requirements are only moving in one direction. The result is win-win for regulators, producers and consumers.
Beyond the ingredient
But even the best ingredient strategy only works if supply can keep up. For manufacturers navigating volatile markets and rising costs, sourcing reliability has become just as important as the quality of the ingredients themselves.
Vegetables are seasonal, natural products. Their availability, quality and price can shift with growing conditions, harvest yields and global supply dynamics in ways that are difficult to predict. That’s why having access to a broad vegetable portfolio can make all the difference to operations. If one crop faces pressure due to weather conditions or seasonal variability, manufacturers need confidence that supply continuity and ingredient quality can still be maintained.
Understanding vegetables go far beyond the ingredient itself. It requires expertise across harvest conditions, crop performance, processing conditions and application behaviour – and helping manufacturers make informed formulation decisions based on those realities. At SVZ, this technical expertise and longstanding heritage runs through everything we do.
Ushering in a new era
Vegetables are becoming some of the most versatile ingredients in modern food manufacturing. They help products feel healthier, support clean labels and offer formulation flexibility in a time when producers need it most, while giving brands creative ways to refresh products without a complete overhaul. Welcome to the veggie reformulation!
Get in touch with our expert team to add veggies to your formulations: https://www.svz.com/contact/
