Key takeaways
- Health remains the top purchase driver, but consumers increasingly view sustainability as part of what makes a food or beverage product “healthy”.
- Combining health and sustainability claims can boost value, with consumers willing to pay a 24% premium for products that deliver both benefits, compared with 18% for sustainability benefits alone.
- Brands should “sell the AND”, integrating health and sustainability across ingredients
Health may be consumers’ top priority when purchasing food and beverage products, but for a growing number of shoppers, sustainability is becoming increasingly intertwined with their definition of what is healthy.
According to the Bain & Company report The Visionary CEO’s Guide to Sustainability 2026, health remains the leading purchase driver for consumers, ranking above environmental concerns, price and brand.
However, sustainability-related attributes such as “natural”, “PFAS-free” and “clean” are gaining prominence alongside health claims and commanding higher price premiums. Consumers surveyed for the report said they would be willing to pay 18% more for a product with sustainability benefits, rising to 24% for products that offer both health and sustainability benefits.
When asked about their primary reason for purchasing a product, shoppers ranked environmental impact as the third most important factor in food and beverage purchases, behind health and quality. Concerns about the sustainability impact of packaged goods were slightly higher than for fresh foods. However, the more significant shift lies in perception, with more consumers associating sustainable food with being healthy.
Jean-Charles van den Branden, Head of Bain’s Global Sustainability Practice, said: “Consumers increasingly associate sustainable fresh food with being ‘natural’, ‘healthy’ and ‘organic’, so sustainability is often interpreted through a health lens rather than as a separate environmental criterion. We would not conclude that consumers care more about fresh food’s environmental footprint. The more interesting point is that, particularly in food, health and sustainability are increasingly overlapping in consumers’ minds.”
For FMCG companies, the implication is to “sell the AND”, he added, by effectively marketing products that are healthier, safer or more resilient, while also being more sustainable.
“Consumers told us they would pay 18% more for sustainability benefits, rising to 24% when combined with health,” said van den Branden. “That shifts sustainability from a corporate-level message to a product and supply chain issue.
“Companies need to think about ingredients, processing, sourcing and resilience together. Upstream, that can mean supporting regenerative agriculture, water efficiency and climate-resilient crops where these measures strengthen supply and resilience.”