The Future of Appetite: Where will food growth come from next?
Future Food Movement Founder Kate Cawley recently contributed to Tesco's health roundtable alongside senior leaders from retail, food manufacturing, nutrition, health and innovation.
From left: Kate Cawley, Future Food Movement; Richard Hall, Danone; Lucy Upton, Dietitian; Ashwin Prasad, Tesco UK CEO. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/Parsons Media Productions.
The Guardian's write-up captured both the urgency and complexity of the challenge. Families want to make healthier choices, yet affordability, convenience, product availability, marketing and inconsistent guidance continue to create barriers.
What became clear throughout the discussion was that health is no longer simply a sustainability or corporate responsibility agenda. It is becoming one of the defining commercial growth opportunities for the food industry.
Future Food Movement member Tesco has increased the proportion of its food sales classified as healthy from 58% in 2019 to 65% by the end of 2025. That signals something much bigger than successful reformulation. It reflects changing consumer expectations and a fundamental shift in where future growth will come from.
At the same time, GLP-1 medicines are accelerating a much broader change in how people think about food. Appetite, portion size, satiety, nutrition and value are all being redefined. This isn't simply about creating another "GLP-1-friendly" product category. It's about understanding how changing appetites are reshaping demand, value and growth.
For food businesses, this raises some fundamental questions. What happens when growth is no longer driven by encouraging people to consume more? How should brands innovate as eating behaviours evolve? Which categories stand to gain or lose? And how do businesses create more value when consumers may simply need less food?
These are no longer questions for health teams alone. They sit firmly on the agenda of commercial, category, innovation and executive leadership teams.
At Future Food Movement, our monthly Expert Events don't simply explore emerging trends. We bring together leaders from across the food system to understand what those shifts mean for the decisions businesses need to make next.
10 September | Monthly Expert Event
When Appetite Changes, How Do Brands Grow?
Join leaders from Field Doctor, Veg Power, Whitworths and Sorted Food as we explore one of the biggest strategic questions facing the food industry.
Together we'll examine:
How changing appetites are reshaping consumer demand.
Where future category growth will come from.
What GLP-1 really means for food businesses beyond the headlines.
How brands can create value through better nutrition, relevance and consumer outcomes rather than simply selling more.
The strategic decisions commercial, innovation and leadership teams should already be considering.
This won't be a discussion about healthy eating. It will be a conversation about where the next decade of growth in food is likely to come from.