Americans are grabbing for snacks less – and it appears to be for a variety of reasons, including worries about money, the desire to eat healthier and reduce artificial dyes as well as the increased use of prescription drugs that suppress the urge to munch in between meals.
Executives for several large brand-name snack companies, including the makers of Doritos and DingDongs, have said their sales have been affected by shoppers buying fewer snack products.
“We’re seeing several forces converge that are reshaping consumer snacking behavior,” said David Ortega, a food economist and professor at Michigan State University.
“Price fatigue is setting in after several years of sharp increases, and there’s growing uncertainty about future food costs, especially as new tariffs threaten to drive prices even higher,” Ortega told USA TODAY. That combination is prompting shoppers to cut back, trade down to lower-cost products or become more aggressive in seeking out deals, he said.
But there’s also a broader shift toward healthier eating habits, which together with economic trends, is changing how and what people snack on, Ortega said.
“Consumers aren’t just snacking less ‒ they’re becoming more selective, favoring snacks with stronger nutritional profiles,” he said. “The adoption of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy is accelerating these changes, with appetite suppression leading to lower overall grocery spending and a sharper decline in purchases of highly processed and unhealthy snacks.”
Several food-company executives have referenced the slowdown in snacking in their recent earnings calls with analysts.
General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening said in late March that sales were down for salty snacks, grain snacks and fruit snacks.
“Our view is that a lot of that has to do with consumer confidence,” he said. While GLP-1 use for drugs like Ozempic is increasing, Harmening said, the numbers didn’t change much from quarter to quarter. But Harmening said General Mills was also seeing the same sales decline in its dog food brand.
“To my knowledge, there is not GLP-1s for dog treats,” he said during a call with analysts.
“Our belief,” he said, “is that consumers have become much more value conscious.”
Potato chips and other crunchy snacks on shelves at Trader Joe’s on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, in Meridian Township, Michigan.
Mark Smucker, CEO, president and board chairman of J.M. Smucker, said in February that the company’s sales of Hostess snacks were down, in part, due to “consumers continuing to be selective in their spending, largely driven by inflationary pressures and diminished discretionary income.”
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PepsiCo, the owner of snack brands such as Frito-Lay and Doritos, became the latest company to say consumers were buying fewer snacks. The company, in prepared remarks with its latest earnings report on April 25 , said its North America savory snack performance – primarily Frito-Lay – remained “subdued.”
“Consumers have remained value-conscious across brands and channels as the cumulative impacts of inflationary pressures have strained budgets and altered food shopping patterns,” the company said in those remarks.
Consumers are not only snacking less, they’re snacking differently, said Rob Dongoski, global lead for food and agribusiness at Kearney, a strategy and management consulting firm.
Many of the companies that are saying their sales are down are in the “ultra-processed category” of food “and that’s where consumers are trending away from,” Dongoski told USA TODAY.
“Does that mean they’re not picking up a bit of a small serve yogurt or some beef jerky or a handful of pistachios? It’s a different kind of snacking,” he said.
There are three forces pressuring the food category now, said Dongoski: consumers wanting to eat healthier; the Make American Healthy Again Commission under President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which is initiating efforts to phase out petroleum-based synthetic dyes from food; and GLP-1 drugs which suppress appetite.
“Snacking gets right in the crosshairs,” Dongoski said.
Study: Consumers worried about tariffs are pulling back on spending
Dongoski said he believes consumers are mostly pulling away from snack foods to be healthier and it is not as economy driven, at least in the short term.
He believes the U.S. is “really at the precipice of some pretty significant change in the food system,” which has been building for some time but is starting to show up in slower sales of snacks by major companies.
There are also generational influences at play, he said. Gen Xers are getting closer to retirement and are thinking about their health. Gen Zers and Millennials also have a very different attitude about food than their older peers at the same age and are looking for healthier options, Dongoski said.
In the latest quarterly Consumer Stress Index by the Kearney Institute, which provides insights into how consumers are feeling, shoppers said they were wary of spending, due to the rising costs of goods overall and tariff worries.
Consumers were moving from optimizing to sacrificing and taking on a “wait-and-see” stance about spending, said Katie Thomas who leads the think tank.
The chips and snacks aisle at a ShopRite.
As consumers are watching their finances and stressed about their budgets, the snack category is the easiest to drop, said Chris Costagli, vice president and food insights lead for NielsenIQ. Costagli has been running a study of about 1,000 consumers monthly since January to gauge their sentiments on a variety of food-buying issues.
In a report to be released soon, Costagli said 43% of those surveyed in April said they were cutting back on buying snack foods and 38% were looking for deals more often. Thirty-seven percent of people also said their impulse purchases at the grocery store were down and 17% said they were buying fewer premium or indulgent snacks, such as a candy bar, he said. Those numbers continue to increase each month, Costagli told USA TODAY.
Robin Wenzel, group head of the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, agreed that more shoppers, concerned about both their health and their budgets, are dropping snacks off the shopping list.
“While inflation and rising costs have made U.S. consumers more intentional with their food purchases, prioritizing essentials over discretionary items, preferences also seem to be shifting,” she told USA TODAY, also pointing to GLP-1s and recent action to remove certain additives and dyes from the food system. ” U.S. consumers are rethinking eating habits and seeking out nutrient-dense food options, including snacks, causing this rebalance.”
Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at blinfisher@USATODAY.com or follow her on X, Facebook, or Instagram @blinfisher and @blinfisher.bsky.social on Bluesky. Sign up for our free The Daily Money newsletter, which will include consumer news on Fridays, here.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why are consumers snacking less? We explain.
