Reformulation for health

Reformulation support for Scotland

We all know that the impacts of a poor diet and obesity are profound. The Scottish Government's obesity prevention plan: A Healthier Future highlights the visions and ambitions of improving diet and health across our nation.

Recipe reformulation is rated as one of the most effective ways industry can help improve dietary health.

Our Reformulation team is helping small to medium sized food companies to reformulate their products. This support is available for both FDF members and non-members. This project is funded by the Scottish Government and we work with a range of partners to help businesses access a wide range of support and funding.

Since the programme’s launch we have helped to remove hundreds of millions of calories and tonnes of salt from the Scottish diet. View some of our achievements here. 

What is reformulation?

Reformulation involves making changes to an existing recipe to boost the health profile of the product. We work to enable the 8 principles of reformulation which will have the biggest impact on the dietary health of the consumer.

The process of reformulating is different for each manufacturer. We will review your current nutritional specification, and benchmark this against existing market trends to ensure that any work done now strengthens your product’s longevity, we will map any upcoming industry guidelines and legislations which may affect your product. We use a holistic approach to reformulation, and will present all the nutritional improvements for your product that could be achieved through reformulation.

Most importantly, we will encompass what is important to your brand specifically and ensure that reformulation works for you.

Working with us

The reformulation for Health team will work to find a tailored solution for each business. This may include reducing fat, salt and sugars from products; or increasing levels of fibre and fruits and vegetables within foods; or even looking at portion size and clearer labelling information. No two reformulation projects are the same, and while some may be as simple as replacing salt for a low sodium alternative, others may utilise multiple principles to get the most out of your reformulation.

While we are here to support Scottish SME size manufacturers, we understand that there are other key influencers to reformulation. We can work with ingredient suppliers or manufacturers who feed into Scotland, as making a change to one pre-made ingredient can help hundreds of manufacturers who use these ingredients in Scotland. 

With our Reformul8 Partnership we are working to bring together all these influencers, to improve connectivity and make reformulation more facile. If you are involved in reformulation in any way, we would love to discuss opportunities to collaborate.

Get in touch to find out how we can help your business now!