Healthy Eating Hacks For Your Custom Food Packaging

It’s hard to deny that waistlines are growing everywhere from America to Australia. Sales of sugary snacks and high fat treats might be mostly stable, but marketing these products is becoming a bit harder.

And as society becomes more educated on nutrition and consequences of consuming too much of a good thing, sales can start to fall.

So, as food marketers, is it our responsibility to help society drop a few pounds? Maybe, maybe not. Whichever side of the coin you are on, there are several strategies we can implement to encourage our customers to eat a little healthier—even if you are marketing what society deems as unhealthy food.

Nutrition Label Placement on Your Packaging

Traditionally, the nutrition label placement has always been located on the back of the food package. But who says that you have to play by the rules? Retail packaging allows you to place your nutrition label wherever you want—and a recent British study suggests that front panel placement might encourage healthier eating habits with your customers.

By highlighting the calorie amount for a single serving size of your product, it will help customers think twice of how they can fit your product into their daily allowance.

The key is to help the customer understand that your product can easily fit into allowance, as long as they follow the recommended guidelines.

And although the calorie amount is highlighted for just one serving, portion control truly is key.

Luckily, there’s a hack for that.

Serving Size: A Real-Life Picture

This isn’t breaking news in the packaging world, but it’s a smart hack that helps customers stay smart with portion size.

Custom food packaging will allow you to print the exact serving size right on your stand up bag or whatever type of retail packaging you use. From there, customers will be able to clearly see the recommendation of your serving size. If they’re snacking straight from your stand up bag, it can help them keep an eye on their portion control.

While we’re on the topic of custom packaging and printing, let’s talk about the quality of print to encourage portion control. Rotogravure printing results in bold, high quality graphics that showcases not only portion size, but food texture as well.

Your stand up bags will look good enough to eat.

Encourage Exercise With Custom Food Packaging

We understand that you’re a food marketer and not a personal trainer. However, it never hurts to encourage healthy lifestyle habits along side of your food product. Giving a quick mention of the importance of exercise around your nutrition label can remind customers to fit a walk into their day.

To take things a step further (no pun intended), you can encourage exercise through a more creative outlet. While children’s food packaging might have puzzles and riddles for entertainment, you can offer instructions for outdoor games instead. This will set you apart from the competition while promoting exercise in a method that kids can enjoy.

You can go about this healthy eating hack in a Pinterest-like fashion, with step-by-step instructions for children to play games outside and get exercise. Including photos along with your instruction will grab attention and help kids process the information—especially if they can’t read yet!

It’s great to help mentally engage kids as they’re eating, but let’s not forget that physical activity is crucial to maintain a healthy weight. And if you need a few ideas, you can find tons of fun and easy outdoor games for kids on Pinterest.

Demonstrate a Balanced Diet

Sometimes it’s necessary to go back to basics. While you don’t really have to print a food pyramid on your custom packaging, you can give visual cues that can help customers keep their diet in check.

For example, if you’re a company that markets cookies, you can include a photo of a balanced lunch that includes your cookie as a treat. You could also list out an entire 2,000-calorie diet that is realistic for the average person, but allows for a daily treat (i.e. your cookie). The key is to help the customer understand that your food product can fit into their diet within reason.

The problem stems from when people decide to eat the entire bag vs. a serving or two. While you can’t control the eating habits of your customers, you can help influence their habits with custom packaging. Your goal should be to promote your product in a way that fits into a healthy lifestyle.

Better Health Comes in Small Packages

While this strategy has been implemented for several years now, let’s not forget that the size of your retail packaging can help influence serving sizes. Marketers have opted for individual serving size snacks to help with portion control. Retail packaging in general has grown bigger over the years, which is contributing to the overeating problem in several parts of the globe.

Don’t forget, small food packaging is perfect for situations other than portion control, such as: