January’s Metabolic Promise and the Physics No One Mentions

I have spent 35 years formulating products for brands you know. I have watched this cycle repeat every January, and I will share with you what I tell the brand founders who sit across my desk chasing the same impossible math. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

But the reality is more nuanced than that tired aphorism suggests. And therein lies the physics no one mentions.

Here is what consumers actually want when stripped of marketing language. They want flavor and richness and satisfaction. They want the mouthfeel of fat and the reward of sweetness and the savory depth of salt. These are not weaknesses to be ashamed of. They are the biological drivers that have kept our species alive for millennia. The modern dilemma is not that we crave these things. The dilemma is that we want them without paying the caloric toll.

So we turn to food science. And food science, I can assure you, has answers. Just not the ones printed on the front of the package.

When a brand approaches me seeking a reduced sugar formulation, the conversation inevitably turns to alternative sweeteners. Stevia and monk fruit extract are the darlings of the clean label movement and the ingredients that allow brands to occupy premium shelf space at natural retailers while making aggressive nutritional claims. Done with restraint, these ingredients can produce remarkable results. A twenty or thirty percent sugar reduction, using natural high intensity sweeteners and proper balance, can be nearly indistinguishable from the original.

But restraint rarely survives the marketing meeting.

The pressure to differentiate and to claim superiority and to win the comparison shopper scanning labels in the aisle pushes formulations past the point of palatability. When every competitor is shouting numbers, the instinct is to shout louder. Stack another claim. Push another threshold. Differentiate through metrics because metrics are easy to compare and easy to print in bold type. That “less than 3 net carbs” callout. That “22 grams of protein” threshold. These are not formulation targets. They are marketing thresholds. Round numbers chosen because they sound impressive on packaging. And hitting them exacts a price that never appears on the label.

The price is taste. The price is texture. The price is the subtle wrongness that registers somewhere between your second and third bite, when your palate recognizes that something is missing, that the promise has not been kept, and that you will not be purchasing this product again.

Here is where the secret becomes uncomfortable for those committed to the natural premium positioning that dominates industry conversation.

Sometimes the conventional path delivers superior results.

Consider the sweetener landscape more closely. Erythritol carries the natural designation and has become ubiquitous in better for you formulations. But at higher usage levels it causes gastrointestinal distress in some consumers. Not exactly the outcome you want associated with your brand experience. Allulose shows tremendous promise as a formulator’s tool, with excellent taste and functional properties, but remains controversial in natural channels, with some retailers excluding it entirely. Meanwhile, isomalt has been a formulation workhorse for decades. It is not novel. It is not exotic. It will not inspire breathless ingredient stories for your brand’s social media presence. What it will do, in many applications, is simply perform better. Better sweetness curve. Better bulk and mouthfeel. Better stability. And often better margin.

The clean label philosophy has tremendous merit. I am not here to diminish it. Access to natural retailers, alignment with consumer values around ingredient transparency, and the ability to command premium pricing are legitimate strategic advantages. But I have watched too many brands pursue both premium natural positioning and extreme nutritional claims simultaneously, and the result is predictable. They end up in an undefined middle ground. A product too compromised to satisfy the taste expectations of mainstream consumers, yet too aggressive in its claims to deliver the sensory experience that natural channel shoppers increasingly demand.

Here is what gets lost in that calculus. The same consumer persona shopping for your product at Whole Foods is also pushing a cart through Target next Tuesday. The winning strategy is not choosing between retail channels. The winning strategy is understanding your consumer’s need state and following them wherever they shop. Chase the person, not the shelf placement. Build for taste and performance first and let the metrics follow, rather than engineering backward from a number that looks good on a package.

That race to outdo the competition on metrics has no winners. You cannot shout your way to consumer loyalty. At some point the math collides with the mouth, and the mouth always wins.

So what does this mean for you standing in that grocery aisle this January, genuinely trying to make choices that support your goals?

Read beyond the front of the package. That parade of claims, the protein count, the fiber content, the net carb calculation, tells you what the marketing team prioritized. It tells you nothing about whether the product will actually taste good enough to eat twice.

Consider the moderate path. A product offering fifty percent of the calories of the leading brand is making a fundamentally different promise than one claiming some ultra low threshold that defies sensory logic. The first is saying we have made meaningful improvements while preserving what you love about this category. The second is saying we have prioritized a number over your experience. One of these products will still be in your pantry in March. The other will be in your trash by the second week of January. An expensive reminder that metrics are not meals.

Do not pay a premium for magic. The four dollar meal replacement promising metabolic impossibilities is, in most cases, a worse value than the two dollar option offering reasonable reduction with honest performance. Your palate is not fooled by label claims. Your satisfaction is not calculated in grams of protein.

And perhaps most importantly, sustainable progress toward any goal requires that you actually enjoy the process. A dietary approach built on products you tolerate rather than appreciate is an approach with an expiration date. The resolution that survives is the one that does not feel like punishment.

This conversation continues beyond the newsletter. Our free Discord community is where practitioners and operators dig into these ideas together.

There is more than one path to the top of the mountain. The premium natural formulation has its place. The conventional ingredient set has its place. The aggressive claim structure can work in the right application for the right consumer with the right expectations.

But the brands that endure, and the products that build genuine consumer loyalty rather than trial and churn, are the ones that understand a fundamental truth. You cannot optimize for the label and the experience simultaneously. At some point, you must choose.

As a formulator, I can build you almost anything you can imagine. I can hit your protein target. I can engineer your net carb claim. I can construct a front of package story that will stop shoppers in their tracks.

What I cannot do is put ten pounds of product into a five pound bag. The laws of physics are universal, not optional. Every honest formulator knows the tradeoffs exist. Every experienced brand operator has sat in the meeting where the numbers looked right on paper and wrong on the palate. The question is never whether you will compromise. The question is whether you will choose your compromise deliberately or discover it in your velocity reports six months later.

This January, as you navigate the annual flood of better for you promises, remember that the most important metric never appears on the package. Will this product make you happy enough to buy it again?

That is the only number that matters.

If you are building or buying in this category right now, ask yourself which tradeoff you have quietly accepted and whether it is the one you intended to make.

Mark Haas is the founder and CEO of RegulateCPG, an AI-powered compliance infrastructure platform designed to democratize regulatory expertise for food and beverage companies. With 35 years of experience navigating food safety regulation, manufacturing operations and multi-jurisdiction compliance, Mark has formulated over 200 brands representing more than $2 billion in market value. His work spans conventional, plant-based and emerging protein technologies across FDA, USDA, CFIA and EU regulatory frameworks, with deep expertise in using sophisticated amino acid analysis and PDCAAS methodology to create litigation-proof label claims for alternative protein companies.

For more insights on using regulatory compliance as competitive advantage, visit regulatecpg.com or connect with Mark on LinkedIn.

Legal Disclaimer:
This article discusses regulatory strategy and compliance approaches but does not constitute legal advice. Companies should consult qualified food law attorneys and regulatory counsel for guidance on specific labeling decisions and regulatory interpretations applicable to their products.