I advise individuals and companies on the integration of nutrition purpose into both individual food planning and commercial product development. I have written extensively about nutrition purpose as it relates to our individual food choices. I have even taught classes on it! Now I would like to turn your attention to the grocery store shelves and the consumer packaged goods’ in the health, wellness, and performance nutrition category.

The shelves are lined with foods that are pure junk or what my kids and I call fake food. Don’t get me wrong, I am not righteous about this in any way. Junk food finds it’s way into our tummies on occasion. I let my kids experiment and spend their own money on such junk but, they eat it with full transparency to its junk-ness. We look at the ingredients to confirm that, yep, nothing in here that serves a health and wellness purpose inside my body.

What really gets me are the foods that nutri-wash. These are foods made to meet criteria for putting claims like high-protein, less- sugar, or plant-based on their package but a look at the ingredient list reveals junk like artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, or sweeteners.

Assuming food companies really do want to deliver foods that make a meaningful dietary impact on their eaters, I have set out on a mission to help them deliver on that promise. I do this by applying my Four Point Method.

This method shifts development from claims-driven to purpose-driven. It is a subtle but important shift. For example, instead of focusing on making a food high in protein, shift to making foods that serve the nutrition purpose of muscle health.

Based on my years of experience as the leading nutrition strategist at the world’s most successful, privately owned energy bar company and working with a variety of other companies since, I have seen my Four Point Method result in nutritiously sound food with truthful marketing that stands the test of time and competition.

The method is simple and can be worked through when making a totally new product or in creating transformational marketing content:

Step One: Determine the nutrition purpose of your food, ingredients, or entire product line

Step Two: Determine the nutrition principles that support the purpose.

Step Three: Identify preferences of your audience and marketl place

Step Four: Plan what ingredients to use to meet the purpose, how you will explain the food’s value and key attributes that are worth amplifying to your audience.

The Four P’s also help align the team around nutrition from the beginning. The result is a nutritionally beneficial food based on a rock-solid nutrition platform. This opens the door for truthful nutrition that can be amplified with confidence and differentiated from the competition!

If you are working on a food, program, or technology in the health, wellness, and performance market download my Four Point Method framework below to get started in purpose-driven development