State Of The Daypart

Health-and-wellness concerns and changing demographics are revolutionizing morning meal preferences.

Remember the days when sugar-laden cereals were the most common products on breakfast shopping lists? That memory is becoming a distant one as new nutritional research and shifting demographics reshape the morning meal landscape.

Change has come to the breakfast category, and companies that don't embrace the new reality risk forfeiting business to competitors willing to make and market products that appeal to today's food-savvy, health-conscious consumers.

Several factors are impacting retail sales of onetime must-have breakfast products, according to the Rabobank report Cereal Killers: Five Trends Revolutionizing the American Breakfast.

The morning meal has become a new eating-out occasion, with competition from quick-service restaurants (QSRs) and chains such as Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts pulling patrons away from grocery aisles. In addition, "the rising culture of snacking is transforming breakfast into 'snackfast' as consumers seek convenience and portability in the breakfast items they choose," the report notes.

Add to that consumers' growing concerns about products' nutritional profiles, and you have a market ripe for growth.

The Packaged Facts report Food Formulation and Ingredient Trends: Health & Wellness predicts that 2013 will mark breakfast's comeback, with strong consumer interest in products containing fiber, protein, whole grains, vitamins and minerals, omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants.

Understanding the factors influencing consumers' culinary preferences can help manufacturers and retailers alike turn morning innovation into end-of-day profits.

Protein's Importance

Touting the protein content of products and creating high-protein meal solutions can attract shoppers who want to kick off the day with a healthy breakfast — a meal that presents a prime opportunity to consume protein-rich foods such as eggs, lean meat and Greek yogurt.

New research from a University of Missouri study, recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, says a protein-rich breakfast boosts satiety, reduces brain responses involved with food cravings and significantly reduces unhealthy evening snacking.

The study measured the effects of eating a high-protein breakfast that included eggs and beef (with 35 grams of protein), a ready-to-eat cereal breakfast with less than half the protein (13 grams) but an equal amount of calories (350), or no breakfast for seven days, in overweight teenage girls who typically skip breakfast.

"Participants who consumed breakfast meals that included protein-rich eggs and beef, which contained 40 percent protein, 40 percent carbohydrate and 20 percent fat, reported greater feelings of fullness compared to those who ate a cereal-based breakfast, which contained 15 percent protein, 65 percent carbohydrate and 20 percent fat," the study notes. "The higher-protein breakfast also led to significant improvements in daily hunger and satiety hormone levels, reduced food cravings prior to dinner (as shown from reduced neural activation) and resulted in consumption of fewer high-fat evening snacks than skipping breakfast."

Those findings mesh with past research in adult men and women.

"Nutritionists always tout the importance of breakfast, but now we understand just how powerful choosing to eat lean protein, like pork sausage or ham, at breakfast can be for teen breakfast skippers in particular," says Dr. Heather Leidy, assistant professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri and lead author of the study.

Fiber and Grains

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that consumers consume at least half of all grains as whole grains, while the Institute of Medicine suggests intake of between 25 and 38 grams of dietary fiber each day. Yet many consumers fall short of those goals.

"According to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, less than one in 10 Americans get the recommended amount of fiber in their diets," says Kevin Miller, a senior nutrition scientist at Battle Creek, Mich.-based Kellogg Co. and a contributing author to Recent trends in ready-to-eat breakfast cereals in the U.S., a study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Strides to up the intake of whole grains and other fiber-rich ingredients, including oat fiber, corn bran, inulin or chicory root fiber, and soluble corn fiber, are being made. According to the USDA report, fiber in breakfast cereals from major manufacturers increased 32 percent between 2005 and 2011. And an impressive 75 percent of Americans say they have made an effort to eat more foods containing whole grains, according to information from the International Food Information Council's 2012 Food and Health Survey.

The Kid Connection

When it comes to breakfast, kids rule. That's the takeaway from The NPD Group's recent research, which reveals that that 31 percent of children influence what they eat early in the day. According to Generation Mom: How Moms Provide and Kids Influence Consumption Patterns in the Home, kids most heavily influence the food and beverage choices at breakfast and morning snack time. Between-meal snacks are chosen by 46 percent of kids, while teens are more than twice as likely to influence what will be eaten for any in-home meal occasion, Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD reports.

"Stay-at-home dinners are quickly growing across all kids' age groups, especially as tight budgets continue to restrict the amount of restaurant meals families can afford," says Darren Seifer, NPD food and beverage industry analyst. "More kids plus more meals being eaten at home represents a growing opportunity for food and beverage manufacturers. By understanding who controls the meal and what is commonly consumed at each meal, you can more effectively target your audience."

Demographic Influences

The growth of the Hispanic population is impacting the food industry in many ways. According to the NPD Group's 2012 NET (National Eating Trends) Hispanic study, that growing ethnic group is influencing breakfast consumption and exhibits slightly different eating habits from non-Hispanic consumers.

Twelve percent of Hispanics, for example, include non-toasted bread in their morning meals, compared with 2 percent of non-Hispanics. Hot cereal/oatmeal has a 10 percent share of non-Hispanics' morning meal occasions, but just 6 percent of Hispanics' breakfasts, while eggs are found more often on breakfast tables in Hispanic homes than in non-Hispanic homes in the United States.

In addition, U.S. birth rates overall are declining — a fact that presents a challenge to cereal manufacturers, as children represent a key cereal-eating demographic, Rabobank research shows. "If millennials are a lost cause, is it a case of boomers or bust?" Rabobank asks rhetorically.

To find out how cereal manufacturers are answering that question, and to discover how the food industry in general is responding to the call for healthy, innovative breakfast options, see the breakfast trends story on page 94.

Touting the protein content of products and creating high-protein meal solutions can attract shoppers who want to kick off the day with a healthy breakfast.