Marketing & Communications

KIND Piles 45K Lbs of Sugar in Times Square to Illustrate Need for Better Snacks

Times Square has housed plenty of eye-catching sights over the years, but this might be the sweetest. In a bid to create buzz around its new product and the amount of added sugar consumed by children in the US each year — a whopping 4.7 billion pounds — KIND Healthy Snacks installed a towering pile of sugar — 45,485 pounds of it — in the heart of the highly trafficked square, stopping professionals and tourists alike in their tracks. The educational installation comes in the midst of back-to-school madness and visually represents how much added sugar kids in the US eat every 5 minutes.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 7 years ago | About a 3 minute read

Times Square has housed plenty of eye-catching sights over the years, but this might be the sweetest. In a bid to create buzz around its new product and the amount of added sugar consumed by children in the US each year — a whopping 4.7 billion pounds — KIND Healthy Snacks installed a towering pile of sugar — 45,485 pounds of it — in the heart of the highly trafficked square, stopping professionals and tourists alike in their tracks. The educational installation comes in the midst of back-to-school madness and visually represents how much added sugar kids in the US eat every 5 minutes.

The stint coincides with KIND’s debut in the fruit snacks space with the release of KIND Fruit Bites. The product line, which contains only fruit and no added sugar, is pointed to disrupt a category that, despite its name, has traditionally over-indexed on snacks filled with added sugar rather than fruit.

“We saw our entrance into the children’s snack space as an appropriate time to use our voice for good — to help people understand how much added sugar kids are eating every day and how that can be detrimental to their overall health,” said Stephanie Perruzza, Registered Dietitian and Health & Wellness Specialist at KIND. “Hopefully the installation will help put a spotlight on these important issues, which have managed to remain largely overlooked — until now.”

“Since day one, KIND has been committed to balancing health and taste and our KIND Promise has centered on crafting snacks with a nutritionally-dense first ingredient,” said Daniel Lubetzky, Founder and CEO of KIND. “KIND Fruit Bites honors this promise and is consistent with how we’ve always entered categories — with an eye toward disruption and a goal of elevating people’s overall experience.”

While the fruit snacks category previously enjoyed a health halo, a recent study by Morning Consult revealed that the perception is unfounded. Findings demonstrated that, when shown the ingredient list of the leading fruit snack, nearly two-thirds of parents believed the ingredient list to be associated with sweetened cereal, soda, candy or a toaster pastry.

“While the general public’s understanding of nutrition has become increasingly sophisticated, an opportunity still exists to educate on added sugars. This is especially true in categories like fruit snacks, where people understandably assume that their snack is made predominantly of wholesome ingredients, such as a fruit,” said Perruzza.

In addition to no added sugar, KIND Fruit Bites do not contain any juices, purees, concentrates, preservatives or genetically engineered ingredients. Each snack has only three ingredients or less and is made with only real fruit, such as cherries, apples and mangos. Each pouch provides on full serving of fruit.