Agriculture & Food

The meal replacement market is hot

Two days ago, the word game of "0 cane sugar" in the vitality forest annoyed a lot of consumers. They always thought it was really sugar-free to drink. God knows how much he has gained secretly! These angry consumers also revealed a fact: People are becoming more and more intolerant of being fat.

At the end of 2019, the team of Wang Limin, a researcher from the Center for Chronic Noncommunicable Disease Control and Prevention of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the team of Professor Jia Peng from the University of Twente in the Netherlands, published an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, pointing out that the prevalence of general obesity in Chinese adults and abdominal obesity are both Presents a situation of substantial increase.

On the one hand, the obesity rate is increasing, and on the other hand, the pursuit of aesthetics and health. "Slimming" and "fat reduction" have become popular words in people’s mouths. "Shut up" and work hard. Meal replacement is gradually becoming popular in this context.

WonderLab, which was only established in 2018, is a dark horse. Its sales reached 60 million in its first year of launch. The domestic cutting-edge meal replacement brand FIT8 exceeded 10 million in sales during the 618 period this year.

Fancy the huge potential of the slimming market, capital has increased. ffit8 announced the completion of the first round of financing of tens of millions of yuan last year, and Hangzhou Hengmei Food Technology Co., Ltd. also completed a round of financing of 100 million yuan last month.

In 2020 alone, there will be a total of 16 financing incidents in the meal replacement sector in the venture capital market, involving 11 companies. The list of investment institutions includes dozens of investment institutions such as IDG Capital, Hillhouse Ventures, Matrix Partners China, Source Code Capital, and Fosun Group. , The financing amount is nearly 1 billion yuan!

The meal replacement market, which has been swarmed by capital, seems to be out of the circle. Whether it is celebrity endorsements or online celebrity promotion, it can be seen everywhere. Data shows that the scale of China's meal replacement market will continue to grow from 2017 to 2020, with a compound annual growth rate. This is 68.8%, of which, China's meal replacement market will reach 47.26 billion in 2020!

The business of "eating" will never go out of style. Can the meal replacements that are named as healthy and weight-loss start a new milestone in the food industry?

Why did meal replacement products rise? Is it an IQ tax?

In the early years, the term "meal replacement" was still rare. Consumers looked at his advertisements and were always subconsciously associated with weight-loss drugs, resulting in resistance. Now only in the past few years, these consumers have begun to " It's so fragrant."

In addition to the health and body anxiety caused by increasing obesity to stimulate consumer demand, meal replacement products have also ushered in a good opportunity for development in recent years.

In July 2016, the State Food and Drug Administration issued the "Administrative Measures for the Registration and Filing of Health Foods", stipulating that the use of raw materials has been included in the list of health food raw materials and the first imported health foods that are supplemented with vitamins and minerals are not required To register, you only need to file, which greatly saves the approval time and cost of some qualified health care products, and breaks the shackles of the supply side of the health care products industry.

The new crown epidemic in 2020 also affects people's views on the body. Everyone's pursuit of weight control and healthy living has been further strengthened, which also provides conditions for the rapid rise of the meal replacement market.

Having said so much, what exactly is a meal replacement product and is it an IQ tax?

From a literal point of view, meal replacement refers to food that replaces normal meals. Early meal replacements have little to do with weight loss. It is just an "enteral nutrient" that can provide nutrition in harsh environments.

Through the dismantling of food nutrients, people sum up the nutrients necessary for the body, break down and recombine others, and produce food that can meet the needs of the body without gaining weight. This is the generation in the current sense. meal.

Although the explanation is simple, the actual meal replacement products are far less casual.

In the United States and the European Union, there are strict standards for the definition of meal replacement products. For example, how much fat and protein must be added to every 100 grams of meal replacement products, and the content of various nutrients must be marked on the product packaging. The user will also see the maximum usage time suggested in the product when purchasing.

The standard is so strict, in order to strictly control the quality, to ensure that the meal replacement can truly provide the nutrients needed by the body. However, there are currently no compulsory standards for meal replacement products in China, which has also led to the shrinkage of many products' nutrients, and long-term consumption has caused malnutrition or even worse.

Meal replacement products can indeed play a role in weight loss and weight control, but there is still controversy about whether it is "healthy".

The market is risky, and you need to be cautious about entering

Judging from the current up-and-coming companies, the meal replacement business is bound to become more and more popular in the next few years, but excluding the glorious parts, problems are frequently exploding.

There are so many different kinds of meal replacement products on the market today, and there are all kinds of things. It is difficult to name a familiar brand. What is even more frightening is that these various products are likely to come from the same foundry.

Originally, the raw materials of these products were very similar, but now they are processed in the same OEM. The degree of homogeneity of the products can be imagined. When the comparison of meal replacements across the street can't find much difference. , It is almost impossible to retain customers by quality.

On the other hand, today’s meal replacement track is not just a dispute between emerging companies, but traditional food giants are also gaining momentum. Compared with other “net celebrity” meal replacement products, they have their own milk tea enthusiasm and hold the “delicious” trump card. The Xiangpiaopiao has obvious advantages, not to mention the old brands such as Mengniu, Wahaha, and Master Kong that have mature marketing channels.

If you continue to rush into the track at this time, it is tantamount to grabbing food from your mouth. It is even more difficult. Once the product has a little problem or cannot quickly occupy the user market, it will be a matter of being kicked out overnight.

The most crucial point is that the meal replacement is now very ventilated, but no one can guarantee that the wind will stop in the next second.

As the old saying goes, sickness comes from the mouth, and what you eat is very important to your body. Although meal replacement products have passed the food safety test, they have replaced the staple food of three meals a day, and the risks of long-term consumption are not yet in place. Knowable.

Today, on the Internet, some bloggers have speculated that long-term use of meal replacements will increase the body's liver function burden or induce bone fragility. Although everything has not been finalized, but it is also a wake-up call-the future of meal replacement is still unknown.