Creating Children’s Drinks

Cargill recently unveiled a range of successful new ‘healthy’ children’s drinks, including a sample called Smile, a strawberry toothfriendly beverage approved to carry the international toothfriendly logo.

19/12/05 The western world is very concerned about the health of its increasingly overweight children. Given the major contribution that soft drinks can make to children’s nutrition, creating beverages that appeal to them and meet ‘expected’ health criteria is now increasingly vital.

Cargill Juice Beverage Applications - with its extensive knowledge of global markets, cultural and social trends and its creative and scientific expertise - is well placed to help. 

Its position as one of the most innovative beverage development partners was demonstrated at Anuga 2005, where it unveiled a range of successful new ‘healthy’ children’s drinks, including a sample called Smile, a strawberry toothfriendly beverage approved to carry the international toothfriendly logo.

Volker Zurowietz, product development manager for Cargill Juice Beverage Applications, explains: “Governments throughout the world now advocate the inclusion of fruit and vegetable juices in a healthy diet because of their health-giving and disease reduction properties.  Additionally, new approaches to healthy eating including the Glycaemic Index (GI) concept, have led to a reassessment of the role of natural sugars in juices in the diet. 

 “We have a responsibility to develop recipes that change traditional habits and tastes and support the WHO (World Health Organisation) ‘five-plus’ fruit and vegetables a day strategy. Juice counts as one of our five daily portions.”

Health-giving ingredients

Cargill Juice Beverage Applications uses a wide range of health-giving ingredients developed by Cargill sister companies and other beverage network partners, from water through to specific beverage applications, to help for instance with weight control and prevent early stage diabetes. 

The organisation also uses minerals, vitamins, micro-ingredients and amino acids as well as proteins such as soya. Beverages including soya, for example, or other proteins, can give a feeling of fullness and promote appetite control. Proteins are also necessary for children’s growth. 

Such ingredients ensure children of all ages can get drinks that taste and look good, that are kind to their teeth, and can be low in sugar and calories.  However, children also require their drinks to be ‘cool’, and fashionable, which means defining targeting age groups carefully and creating products that appeal to their specific tastes.

Mirjam Van Veldhuizen, marketing manager for Cargill Juice Beverage Applications, explained that before creating any drink in this sector companies have to define the market and the age band it is aimed at: “Although there is some overlap and ‘trickle down’ of trends through age groups, each age band has its own traits and preferences.  Drinks with added value, for example concentration-enhancing properties or herbal extracts, appeal to children between 13 and17.

“Eight to thirteen year olds also have a fascination with magic and fantasy things and ‘wizardry’ resulting in a desire for fun magical effects in drinks such as colour changes, fizzing and popping. This is fine for teenagers who buy their own drinks, but to sell to younger children - who depend on their parents to buy the product - then it must also conform to their parents’ perception of what constitutes a healthy product.”

Don’t lose your way

Having defined target age groups, manufacturers must consider markets and the global trends that may or may not affect them. For example, for older age groups trends such as desire, wellbeing, ‘looking good’ and ‘weight and guilt management’ are important.

“This is where Cargill’s exclusive marketing knowledge tool, TrendCompassTM  can help customers,“ continued van Veldhuizen.  “We can customize the TrendCompassTM for a particular country and specific age range. A product can then be developed addressing the market and young customers with the right branding and mix of ingredients.

“This means beverage producers get an innovative new recipe, children get a fun drink and parents and governments can rest assured it will also be good for them.“