Amid the ongoing war on sugar, Kraft Heinz announced today it will reformulate its Capri Sun juice pouches by using monk fruit concentrate to cut the kids brand’s sugar content by an average of 40%.
The announcement came during the Kraft Heinz Q2 2022 earnings call today, where CEO Miguel Patrico explained the strategic move was made to optimize the company’s offerings by “[r]emoving elements that our consumers don’t want […] while at the same time reducing costs where possible to mitigate passing on inflation through price.”
“This is great for consumers, especially parents who are looking to reduce sugar intake for their kids while maintaining the great taste their kids love,” Patrico said.
In 2020, Kraft Heinz updated its Global Nutrition Guidelines to commit to reducing total sugar in its products by more than 60 million pounds across its global portfolio by 2025. The company said this would be achieved through innovations and renovations to its product portfolio. As part of the process, the company said it “identified upper limits for calories, sodium, sugar and saturated fat across the 49 categories that represent our total global portfolio.”
Beverages are one of the leading sources of unsuspecting added sugar consumption for American consumers, according to SPINS, driving shoppers to opt for beverages with alternative sweeteners. In a February report, SPINS found that “sweetener alternatives are resonating with beverage buyers,” noting that coconut sugar is up 21%, sugar alcohols are up 20%, stevia is up 10% and unsweetened and monk fruit are up 1.3% over the past year.
Monk fruit is a zero calorie sweetener known for being “intensely” sweet, ranging from 150 to 200 times sweeter than sugar, according to Food Insight. SPINS noted that monk fruit sales have grown 20% across natural and conventional products.
Capri Sun isn’t the only kids beverage brand to jump on the lower-sugar, better-for-you trend in recent years. In 2018, Harvest Hill Company launched Juicy Juice Splashers Organic, a line of lower-sugar organic fruit juice pouch.
Capri Sun’s monk fruit-sweetened juice pouches are rolling out at retailers this summer. Available in 10 flavors – Wild Cherry, Tropical Punch, Fruit Punch, Pacific Cooler, Splash Cooler, Dragon Fruit Punch, Lemonade, Strawberry Kiwi, Mountain Cooler and Passionfruit Mango – the new pouches will reduce added sugar content from 11 grams to 5 grams.