Bell Flavors & Fragrances, Northbrook, IL, has revealed its annual selections for the top trends and flavors for 2014. The company’s marketing teams have complied five trends with supporting flavors that aims to help developers understand consumer demands when launching products in the year to come. 
 
To compile this list, Bell’s worldwide marketing teams researched the top consumer macro trends, tracked the company’s sample requests throughout 2013, visited numerous restaurants and stores, and sourced external databases to learn about menu trends, product launches, and consumer preferences.
 
According to their research, Bell forecast that many of the macro trends seen in 2013 will overlap with those in 2014. Bell predicted that allergen concerns will continue to increase and innovative solutions will be developed.  The company anticipated that cooking sauces like red miso, oyster, soy, peanut and fish sauces will be reformulated to offer allergen free versions. Similarly, Bell expects that gluten-free offerings will maintain their popularity in 2014, and expects that flavors will play an important role in the development of these products.
 
Bell also forecast that healthy lifestyle offerings will continue to grow in popularity in 2014. The company predicted new launches offering a healthy spin on familiar flavors. Additionally, Bell cited a whole new generation of superfruits entering the market, such as the company’s newly featured flavor, aronia berry.
 
Further, the company cited Latin America and Asia as popular sources of new ethnic flavors. Bell predicted that high profile events like the World Cup and Olympics will peak interest in Brazilian and South American culture and cuisine.
 
For more information, check out Bell’s infographic highlighting the upcoming flavor and fragrance trends in the year to come: