What a healthy snack actually means

Healthy snack is not a title a pack can award itself. For us it means four things that anyone can check: a short ingredient list that reads easily, a clear portion, sugar and fat stated plainly on the label, and wording that promises nothing about the eater's body. This piece explains each of the four, and how Color of Vietnam deals with the word healthy sitting inside the name of its own brand Natural & Healthy.

A word stretched too far

In the snack trade, healthy can mean low in calories, high in protein, no added sugar, baked instead of fried, few ingredients, or simply a green pack. Each meaning speaks to a different worry of the shopper. None is wrong on its own. Pile them all into one word and the word stops saying anything.

We do not have a definition for the whole industry. We only have the way we choose to use the word, and that way is written down so that anyone can check it.

Four things you can check

When someone on the product team says a sample is healthier than the last version, they have to show that at least one of these four has changed:

• Ingredients: the list got shorter or easier to read, and the first ingredient is something the eater recognises, such as cashew, rice, corn, oats or seaweed.
• Portion: one pack is one serving, with the weight stated, rather than a large pack with advice to eat a third of it.
• Sugar and fat: the figures in the nutrition table and the type of fat, said plainly. No sugar hidden behind several different names in the ingredient list.
• Wording: describe what the product contains, not what it does for your body.

The fourth is a line we do not cross. We are not doctors and not nutrition researchers. We make snacks. The best story we can tell honestly is about ingredients and how they are made.

A snack is never a meal

One thing worth saying plainly: a nut bar, an energy bar or a rice cracker is food between meals. A bar full of cashew carries fat from the nuts, and fat carries energy. An energy bar needs something sweet to bind it and to taste right, so it contains sugar. A rice cracker is crisp because of starch. None of these replaces a proper meal, and none of our labels suggests it does.

Saying so does not make the products worse. It puts them in their place: a small, good tasting thing made from decent ingredients, for a particular moment in the day.

Living with the name Natural & Healthy

One of our four brands is called Natural & Healthy. The name makes a bigger promise than most snack brands do, so we wrote separate rules for it:

• Cashew is the main ingredient of every product in the range.
• The ingredient list must be readable aloud without stumbling.
• Each bar is one portion, and its weight is printed on the front.
• The front of the pack talks only about ingredients and flavour: cashew, cranberry, seaweed. Not one word about weight, the heart, digestion or any part of the body.

At one label review someone proposed adding a phrase about energy for a long day to the front. As a sales idea it was reasonable. Under the rules above it fails, because it talks about the eater's body rather than the ingredients. We dropped it and used a line about how much of the bar is cashew compared with everything else. The second line can be checked. The first cannot.

What buyers and candidates should ask

If you are an importer or distributor choosing a snack to call healthy in your range, three questions are enough: what is the first ingredient, how many grams and how much sugar in one pack, and is there a sentence on the label about health that the maker cannot prove.

If you are a candidate for R&D or marketing, you will be asked the same three questions in the other direction, at every product review and every time you write copy. That is how our value Speak Honestly reaches everyday work.

We are hiring a Fresher Product R&D (FMCG) and a Marketing Leader in Hanoi. If you want to make snacks in a way that can be said out loud and checked, see the Careers page. Partners who want the ingredient list of any product can contact us.