FMCG Gurus – Allergies and Intolerances: Navigating Consumer Needs – Trend Report 2026
Report Description:
Food allergies and intolerances are becoming a more visible part of consumers’ everyday lives, but understanding of these conditions remains inconsistent. Self-diagnosis, digestive discomfort, dietary avoidance, and growing scrutiny of ingredients and processing are creating a more complex landscape for consumers and brands. This report explores how people are identifying and managing allergies, intolerances, and digestive health concerns, and examines how brands can provide greater clarity, reassurance, and support without adding further confusion.
The Challenge / Problem for Brands:
Consumers are approaching allergies, intolerances, and digestive health from very different starting points, ranging from professionally diagnosed conditions and family dietary needs to self-diagnosed sensitivities and everyday digestive discomfort. At the same time, concerns around ingredients, additives, formulation, and food processing are influencing how products are evaluated. Brands therefore need to communicate suitability and product information clearly while avoiding messaging that oversimplifies complex conditions or encourages unnecessary concern.
Proposed Solution / Problem It Solves:
This report explores how brands can respond to changing consumer needs through clearer ingredient and suitability communication, greater transparency around formulation and processing, and propositions that extend beyond restriction alone. It considers how consumers manage digestive health through avoidance and wider dietary changes, the role of trust and credible information, and opportunities to connect digestive support with broader wellness needs. It also examines how brands can adapt existing portfolios and develop propositions for different consumer needs rather than treating allergies and intolerances as a single, uniform issue.
Risk of Getting This Wrong:
Unclear suitability claims, complicated product communication, or insufficient transparency can increase uncertainty in an already complex health space. Brands also need to recognize that free-from and allergen-related positioning creates expectations around ingredient control, manufacturing, traceability, and substantiation. Focusing too narrowly on avoidance may also overlook consumers whose concerns relate to digestive comfort, processing, or broader wellness rather than a formally diagnosed allergy or intolerance.
This report helps you decide:
How to communicate ingredients and product suitability more clearly, how to respond to different levels of consumer need, where greater formulation and processing transparency can strengthen reassurance, how digestive health propositions can move beyond avoidance, and where existing products or new innovations can better support changing expectations around allergies, intolerances, and everyday digestive wellness.
Who this is for:
Food, beverage, and nutritional supplement manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, retailers, and marketing, innovation, R&D, technical, category, and product development professionals looking to understand changing consumer attitudes toward allergies, intolerances, digestive health, ingredients, and processing, and translate these needs into clearer and more relevant propositions.
FMCG Gurus – Allergies and Intolerances: Navigating Consumer Needs – Trend Report 2026
Report Description:
Food allergies and intolerances are becoming a more visible part of consumers’ everyday lives, but understanding of these conditions remains inconsistent. Self-diagnosis, digestive discomfort, dietary avoidance, and growing scrutiny of ingredients and processing are creating a more complex landscape for consumers and brands. This report explores how people are identifying and managing allergies, intolerances, and digestive health concerns, and examines how brands can provide greater clarity, reassurance, and support without adding further confusion.
The Challenge / Problem for Brands:
Consumers are approaching allergies, intolerances, and digestive health from very different starting points, ranging from professionally diagnosed conditions and family dietary needs to self-diagnosed sensitivities and everyday digestive discomfort. At the same time, concerns around ingredients, additives, formulation, and food processing are influencing how products are evaluated. Brands therefore need to communicate suitability and product information clearly while avoiding messaging that oversimplifies complex conditions or encourages unnecessary concern.
Proposed Solution / Problem It Solves:
This report explores how brands can respond to changing consumer needs through clearer ingredient and suitability communication, greater transparency around formulation and processing, and propositions that extend beyond restriction alone. It considers how consumers manage digestive health through avoidance and wider dietary changes, the role of trust and credible information, and opportunities to connect digestive support with broader wellness needs. It also examines how brands can adapt existing portfolios and develop propositions for different consumer needs rather than treating allergies and intolerances as a single, uniform issue.
Risk of Getting This Wrong:
Unclear suitability claims, complicated product communication, or insufficient transparency can increase uncertainty in an already complex health space. Brands also need to recognize that free-from and allergen-related positioning creates expectations around ingredient control, manufacturing, traceability, and substantiation. Focusing too narrowly on avoidance may also overlook consumers whose concerns relate to digestive comfort, processing, or broader wellness rather than a formally diagnosed allergy or intolerance.
This report helps you decide:
How to communicate ingredients and product suitability more clearly, how to respond to different levels of consumer need, where greater formulation and processing transparency can strengthen reassurance, how digestive health propositions can move beyond avoidance, and where existing products or new innovations can better support changing expectations around allergies, intolerances, and everyday digestive wellness.
Who this is for:
Food, beverage, and nutritional supplement manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, retailers, and marketing, innovation, R&D, technical, category, and product development professionals looking to understand changing consumer attitudes toward allergies, intolerances, digestive health, ingredients, and processing, and translate these needs into clearer and more relevant propositions.
Files included in this report:
FMCG-Gurus-Allergies-and-Intolerances-Navigating-Consumer-Needs-Trend-Report-2026.pdf
FMCG-Gurus-Allergies-and-Intolerances-Navigating-Consumer-Needs-Trend-Report-2026.pptx