Food companies cater to health freaks

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New Delhi: For Neaty, a weekly visit to the super market means scouting for food that supports her hectic lifestyle.

This BPO employee is just one among a growing list of consumers who prefer retail brands that come with with tags promoting better health.

"Because of my work schedule, I definitely try some of the health products when they hit shelves," says Neaty.

Alaphia, a homemaker, says, "Kids these days prefer chocolates and biscuits, which is why I purchase things like Kit-kat lite and diet coke.

Afraid of losing out on the expanding base of the waistline-conscious consumers, big food companies have now taken to launching healthier variants of their popular brands.

So, if Britannia has been retailing digestive Marie and Slimz cheese, ITC has just announced health cookies under the Sachin's slim-kit name.

India's largest food company Nestle is busy hard-selling atta Maggie, Everyday is promoting Slim and most recently, Kit-kat had launched lite.

The latest to unravel its big plans is Pepsi. "We have launched namkeen called lites. It is a low fat and roasted namkeen. We also have cheetos, which has 25 per cent less fat. The intent is to provide the consumer a range of choices give nutritional information," says Manu Anand from Functional foods, Pepsico India.

While food companies are more than eager to steer clear of the bad press that recent issues like colas in schools have created, their appetite for health food has also been whetted by retail research like the one by AC Nielsen.

A recent study found out that last year, Indians were amongst the top 10 buyers of foods with 'health supplements' gloablly.

But not everyone on the shop floor is biting the health food bait. Indians love their street food too much, which is perhaps why we may be a long way from driving a company bankrupt merely on a health fad.

Remember the Atkins craze in the US and how that scripted the downfall of Crispy creams? But food brands in India aren't about to take chances—they're on a launch spree and backing it with big mktg spends so that shoppers can be rest assured that this isn't a slim-whim that'll lapse once the new year passes.