As members of the snack and bakery industries, we understand the necessity of nibbling our way through the day, the art of grazing, the beauty of a quick bite. We are a mobile and snacking culture, and the consequence of six smaller meals has grown more common than three traditional squares. Nourishment has grown increasingly portable, and often, when we take the time to sit, our selections prove shareable. Consider our many quintessential trios: sliders, street tacos, spring rolls. Consumption is communal, and snacking binds us the world over.

The worldwide snack market is now valued at $374 billion, as noted in a recent Nielsen TV interview with James Russo (Nov. 17, “Satisfying the Snacker in All of Us”), senior vice president of consumer insights at the global information and measurement company. “We’re not just snacking between meals, we’re snacking in place of meals,” he observes, noting that 45 percent of global consumers are using snacks in place of meals. And this penchant for snacking neatly unifies our oft-dualistic relationship with food, with health and nutrition weighing one side of the proverbial scales and unbridled indulgence on the other (ideally with a nice ego-mediated balance between the two). Items as seemingly disparate as a nutritionally focused fruit-nut-grain bar for breakfast, midmorning maple-glazed doughnut, lunchtime Mediterranean veggie snack wraps, a couple of handfuls of sriracha popcorn in the afternoon, barbecue pineapple pork sliders at dinner, and a few quinoa chocolate chip cookies afterward can potentially work their way into our dietary path—everyday intersections of lighthearted, indulgent snacking and intentional, mindful nutrition.

As Nielsen keenly understands, we are also a data-driven society. Information and analytics surround our every move, and we eagerly gather every bit and byte we can during daily data mining to help guide our various business pursuits. And while there’s something to be said for informational grazing, time is typically tight. When we have a project in our sights, we need targeted deep dives into the insight that will help guide our next moves.

That’s why we’ve developed the new “Solutions” section of the Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery website at www.snackandbakery.com/solutions. This web destination assembles multiple pieces of content puzzles, presented as a unified picture under five of the primary core competencies in snack and bakery today:

• Better-for-You—ingredients, research and development, and trends related to healthy snacks and bakery products
• Gluten-Free—ingredients, research and development, and trends related to gluten-free snacks and bakery products
• Ingredient Solutions—ingredients to aid and improve formulation and processing of products like pizza, tortillas, bars, cookies and chips
• Plant Efficiency—tactics, equipment and packaging to improve processing efficiency when manufacturing snacks and bakery products
• Sustainability—supply chain, packaging and operational tactics to improve initiatives related to ethical consumerism

Each of these Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery Solutions gathers together multiple links to relevant—and regularly updated—content so you can rapidly access concentrated information vital to current business initiatives. This is content related to solution-centered ideas, ingredients, equipment, packaging and logistics—and it will indefinitely remain “evergreen” and instrumental to decision-making processes for folks across snack and bakery. Stop by Solutions soon and enjoy the beauty of highly targeted information at your fingertips.

 We’ll invariably remain a nation of grazers, but the ability to quickly navigate to exactly what you’re looking for, at any given point during a project, is always invaluable.