It is normal for many parents to buy snacks for their children as holiday gifts. But at the same time, it is not easy to buy snacks for children. There are hidden problems behind this, such as the lack of industrial standards for children's snacks, and even the problems that snacks are rich in oil, salt, polysaccharide, and lack of nutrition, which are not conducive to the healthy growth of children.

Enterprises participating in the formulation of group standards includes Guangdong Qibin Food Co., Ltd., Shantou hualefu Food Co., Ltd. and Ningbo Jidian Health Technology Co., Ltd, etc.

General requirements for children's snacks

The group standard "General requirements for children's snacks" describes the applicable scope, product classification and technical requirements of children's snacks, and describes in detail the requirements for children's snacks in terms of raw materials, sensory organs, nutritional components, physical and chemical indicators, pollutants, mycotoxins, microorganisms, food additives, etc. At the technical level.

It can be said that the children's snack group standard has filled the gap of relevant domestic standards, and will be more instructive to the enterprises, applications and production of children's snack R & D.

In addition, in order to avoid the standard falling into a "strange circle" that is difficult to implement and bring reference to consumers and the industry, liangpin store started the children's snack upgrading iteration simultaneously when drafting the group logo. At present, 30 products fully comply with the group logo. At present, the product line mainly includes children's fish intestines, biscuits, functional candy, jelly, milk and other products.

How about children's snacks?

For many parents of children, the first impression is bad. "All junk food", "too many additives" and "affecting normal diet" are numerous. It seems that snacks have long been labeled as "not conducive to the healthy growth of children" by parents.

Parents think that children's food is the main problem

It is not individual parents who have such a prejudice against snacks. A previous survey conducted by China Youth Daily on the parents of 2003 children interviewed showed that 45.0% of the parents were uneasy about the "children's food" on the market. These parents believe that the main problem of "children's food" is excessive food additives (61.0%), followed by exaggerated efficacy and false publicity (58.9%), and then the price is abnormally high (50.5%).

Indeed, the health and safety of children's diet needs to be paid enough attention. The key reason is that children's snacks sometimes have various problems in the market. The most prominent problem is the health and safety of products. For example, at the CCTV 3.15 party in 2019, a number of hot strip production enterprises in Lankao County, Henan and Pingjiang, Hunan were exposed, which once attracted the attention of the industry.

In addition, in order to enhance the appearance, optimize the taste or extend the shelf life of some snacks, some snacks will add chemical ingredients such as essence, spices and food additives., There may even be illegal addition, over range and over dose use. In this regard, many food professional analysts have pointed out that a large number of snacks containing chemical ingredients may lead to obesity and imbalance of nutritional structure in children.

In this regard, the document "healthy China action (2019-2030)" released by the State Council in 2019 points out that unhealthy diets such as high salt, high sugar and high fat are risk factors for metabolic diseases and tumors such as obesity, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes. According to the survey data in 2012, the overweight rate of children and adolescents aged 6-17 is 9.6%, and the obesity rate is 6.4%, which has doubled and doubled respectively over 2002. According to the document, a reasonable diet and reducing the daily intake of edible oil, salt and sugar will help reduce the risk of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, coronary heart disease and other diseases.

As for the current situation of the children's snack industry in China, the white paper shows that the quality of products in the children's snack market is mixed. There are high-end snacks specially developed for children, unhealthy snacks with high sodium and high fat, and even "spicy" snacks without products. In terms of snacks, most of them are candy, biscuits, puffed snacks and other public snacks. There is no obvious difference with adult snacks, and the product definition is vague.

Factors parents need to consider when buying: Children's snacks

Meanwhile, according to the white paper, the quality of children's snacks will affect children's nutritional status to a certain extent, and children's immunity and physical function cannot be compared with adults. A healthy children's snack suitable for children's nutritional needs will be more conducive to children's healthy growth. Therefore, it is particularly important to subdivide the snack market and develop children's snacks.

In the face of the market chaos, parents of children are inevitably dazzled. This is also the reason why many parents choose "one size fits all" to let their children stay away from snacks. But in fact, children's snacks are not junk food, and not all snacks are harmful to children's healthy growth.

According to many research viewpoints, the motivation of consumers to eat snacks mainly includes emotional drive, energy supplement and nutrition supplement. Especially for children, timely and appropriate consumption of healthy snacks is also conducive to the healthy growth of children.

From the research and development of adult snacks to children's snacks, first of all, we should make a major adjustment to the product research and development ideas. Considering that children are special groups, what do they really need? Can children's snacks help them supplement nutrition? Are there any adverse side effects of the raw materials used? At the same time, enterprises should have stricter requirements on the production environment, raw material selection and testing of children's snacks. In addition, in terms of business strategy, children's snacks are very important to win the trust of consumers, which is different from ordinary snacks. Therefore, enterprises also need to make more efforts in packaging design.