After the festive season, indulging in lots of sweets and high-calorie foods, one cannot help noticing the frequent advertisements of Weight Watchers, for buying exercise equipment and for joining fitness studios. Time to live up to your New Years’ resolutions of losing weight and living healthier.
Image source: Carmen Diaz-Amigo, focos-food.com
The Cologne-based retailer group REWE joined the chorus with an interesting marketing strategy. Supported by postcards with hashtag #dubistzucker (you are sugar, meaning: you are sweet), it offers consumers a sampler of its private label chocolate dessert with the original recipe and content of sugar, plus three pots, containing 20%, 30% and 40% less sugar than the original recipe. The retailer suggests starting the test by eating the dessert with the highest sugar level (original recipe), then eating the dessert with the next-lower sugar level and so on. From the organoleptic point of view, this may not be the wisest recommendation, as one would typically start with the sample containing the least sugar. It is the same as in wine-tasting: you start with the light wines and work your way up to the premier cru and grand cru wines.
The price of the sampler of four dessert pots at 85g each is 1€. Each sampler comes with an invitation to vote for the pot containing the right amount of sugar for the consumer’s taste. To ensure that only one vote is submitted per sampler, each sampler comes with a code that has to be entered with the vote.
Considering the obesity problem in Europe and the increasing number of type II diabetics, this is a laudable approach and surely unique in Germany.
REWE also announced that it will expand its private label product range with low-sugar alternatives, e.g. in the dairy sector. And REWE does not stop there. The extensive campaign is accompanied by youtube, Instagram and TV advertising and a magazine, explaining to consumers how to read nutritional labels and identify the amount of sugar contained in the product. It provides recipes using less sugar, explains how much sugar an average human being requires on a daily basis, and how sugar much is in ketchup and coke.
Image source: Bert Popping, focos-food.com
The one thing that raised my eyebrow in the REWE magazine was the story of a woman that lived nine months ‘without sugar’. The author may have gotten a little over-excited with the title, as most foods contain sugars in one form or another. What was concerning though was her statement that she did not eat any fruits in those nine months.
While I think it is laudable to make an effort to reduce the sugar intake, it also needs to be balanced with a healthy diet, to which fruits belong without question, as they deliver vitamins and minerals that are essential for the body.
So overall, REWE is contributing with its campaign to educate consumers. Equally positive is the commitment of the group to offer private label products with reduced sugar content. Let’s hope consumers take notice, as either the section where I found the desserts and the brochures had been freshly stocked or not too many of those products and brochures had been taken. It will surely take some time until the consumer-uptake of this new, healthier offer can be evaluated.
Further information in German language can be found on REWE’s website, aptly named: https://wenigerzucker.rewe.de/
