Snacking products are easy to consume, and often seen as “pleasure” products. At snack time, children simply want to enjoy themselves, but parents have strong expectations for healthier snacking products. Let’s find out what dynamics are driving the children’s snacking market.

The children’s snacking market has a strong future

There are concerned about providing their children with quality food, and are looking for products that are less sweet, cleaner and 100% natural

Snacking: definition and market drivers

The snacking market includes a wide variety of product categories. What they have in common is that they are easy and convenient to eat, even on the go.

This market is experiencing intense development. Having long been monopolized by highly processed industrial products with questionable nutritional profiles, the snacking market is now driven by new consumer expectations for:

• • • More responsible products: healthier, more sustainable, and more ethical;
    • Adapted to everyone’s needs: vegetarian, lactose-free, gluten-free;
    • Affordable;
    • But just as tasty!

What are the specificities of the children’s snacking market?

The world of children’s food is particularly demanding. Indeed, parents need to be reassured. There are concerned about providing their children with quality food, and are looking for products that are less sweet, cleaner and 100% natural[1].

This is a major challenge for manufacturers. On the one hand, they must be irreproachable about the composition of their children’s snacks. And on the other hand, they must find the right means of communication to convince and gain the trust of parents through maximum transparency.

Sugar: a major concern in the world of children’s snacking

High expectations from parents

Above all, parents expect snacking products to meet the nutritional needs of their children. They are therefore looking for products containing quality ingredients that are beneficial to the child’s health. For example, they strongly prefer products containing calcium, essential for growth, and those containing quality proteins.

On the other hand, parents criticize the high sugar content of children’s snack products. It should be noted that 57% of parents say they are concerned about their children’s sugar intake[2].

Health benefits of less processed and less sweetened snacks, proven by science

In 2020, a European cohort study was conducted on children aged 2 to 10 years[3]. Its goal was to highlight the impact of dairy products (milk, yogurt, cheese) consumption as snacks. After several years of follow-up, they found an improvement in the overall quality of the diet of children consuming dairy snacks. This improvement seems to be even more pronounced over time for children who consume cheese as a snack.

The role of dairy ingredients in children’s snacking

Dairy products and ingredients are widely recognized for their nutritional benefits

Thus, dairy ingredients represent highly advantageous solutions in the formulation of healthy snacking products for children. They are used in a wide variety of products such as bars, yogurt, and drinks.

Beyond their technological benefits, dairy ingredients are an excellent option in the development of functional snacks, promoting digestive health, high quality proteins, calcium intake, etc. Dairy products and ingredients are widely recognized for their nutritional benefits. Thus, they are a very good answer to the growing demand for functional children’s snacking products.

Discover the potential of our ingredients in the development of your children’s snacking products:

• • • Think of Laktein WPC 80, our whey protein concentrate, for the formulation of yoghurts and yoghurt drinks, and even to develop protein-rich chocolate;
    • Discover our rennet casein, ideal for the formulation of processed cheese;
    • And do not forget Prolacta®, our native whey protein derived from milk, dedicated to the nutrition of the youngest children.

Source :

[1] FMCG Gurus, The Evolution of Snacking Habits over the Next Five Years, 2021.

[2] FMCG Gurus, Obesity a major concern for parents, 2019.

[3] Iglesia I, Intemann T, De Miguel-Etayo P, et al. Dairy Consumption at Snack Meal Occasions and the Overall Quality of Diet during Childhood. Prospective and Cross-Sectional Analyses from the IDEFICS/I.Family Cohort. Nutrients. 2020;12(3):642. Published 2020 Feb 28. doi:10.3390/nu12030642