09/18/2018 / By Jessica Dolores
Running out of ideas for a healthy snack for you and your children? Try peas or pea-based snacks.
This alternative snack is gaining supporters in Europe, where people are looking for other sources of food that will nourish and keep them healthy in-between meals. Peas, which come from an annual plant, show a lot of promise as a rich source of protein and over-all nutrition.
“Peas can lend flavour, nutrition, and a point of differences to snack mixes, while also showing strong potential to stars as flavoursome snacks in their own right,” global food and drink analyst Julia Buech says.
She has one caveat, though. Peas are not necessarily known for their fantastic flavor. So manufacturers of pea snacks must find ways to make it more palatable to consumers.
This hasn’t kept Europeans from “seeing pea,” however. A survey by market research company Mintel shows that 13 percent and 24 percent of German and Italian consumers, respectively choose peas as their alternative source of protein. The same holds true for 14 percent of the Spanish and Polish respondents who joined the survey.
No wonder food manufacturers are sitting up and and taking notice. Buech observed that peas have leveled up from a “predominantly back-label existence” to a leading role. And new market launches are proofs of this. Data show that pea-based snacks introduced in Europe from November 2016 to October 2017 focused on its protein content. This is a far cry from market launches of the same products in 2013 to 2014, when protein content made up only five percent of marketing campaign.
It’s easy to see why peas are no longer dark horses in the highly competitive snacks industry. In fact, this power food is emerging as the new star in the snacks category.
Next time you go grocery shopping, check out the peas in the shelves. They not only cost less, they’re richer in nutrients compared to those fancy snack foods that promise instant energy but not nutrition to keep you healthy and strong.
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