Last year saw Kingsmill owner Associated British Foods (ABF) acquire rival bread brand, Hovis.
The merger of ABF’s Allied Bakeries and Hovis Group now means ABF is the largest bread manufacturer in the UK, with the duo operating under the guise of ‘Hovis Bakeries’. The new name also comes with a new corporate identity, centred on a new ethos of ‘Nourishing the Nation’.
While this merger could be regarded as another round of consolidation within UK food manufacturing, Leo Campbell, co-founder at Modern Baker (which has a three-year licensing agreement with Hovis to produce its Superloaf), believes it is indicative of a much wider shift.
“After decades of trying to bring Hovis into the fold, ABF has finally succeeded, shifting the 150-year-old brand from private equity into a food company with a long-term view,” he tells Food Manufacture.
“It comes at a consequential moment, as diet-related ill health rises, the definition of healthy food looks inadequate and expectations of everyday food shift.
“Private equity was never built for the patient work this moment demands. ABF is. That makes Hovis Bakeries’ mission, ‘Nourishing the Nation’, significant. It suggests an ambition to reboot the category around a national need, as the nation’s diet needs fixing and the conversation about healthy food is being rewritten.”
The end of an old nutrition model?
For Campbell, what is changing is far bigger than bakery.
“For decades, healthier food has meant less sugar, less salt, less fat and fewer calories,” he continues.
“That became embedded in nutrient profiling models, traffic lights and back-of-pack labelling, driving decades of reformulation that failed to reverse diet-related ill health.
“That framework belonged to its time. Its promise was simple. Too simple, it turns out. Remove the ‘bad’ and population health should improve. It hasn’t. Diet-related ill health has become one of humanity’s greatest health challenges. It turns out the model was never measuring what we actually needed to know about food.”
The Superloaf creator believes we need to “move beyond using three macronutrients, salt and calories as the ultimate proxy for health” and judge food based on its biological performance inside the human body.
He elaborates: “What happens when we eat it? What does it do to blood glucose, fats, cholesterol and inflammation? Does it stimulate our own GLP-1 response? How does it interact with the trillions of microbes in our gut?
“What goes into food still matters. Fibres, polyphenols and other bioactives shape the response. But the real test is what happens once food meets human biology.
“None of this requires exotic new science. The methods have existed for decades, but much of that knowledge has remained buried in academia.”
AI and GLP-1s: The rules are changing
What has changed, according to Campbell, is access to this science.
“Large language models (LLMs) are putting it directly into consumers’ hands. People can now interrogate everyday food against nutritional science in seconds and at the point of choice,” he notes.
“AI is turning complex science into instant product recommendations, moving a substantial part of the buying decision beyond traditional brand marketing, and, with it, much of the power to define what ‘healthy’ means.
“Combine this with GLP-1 drugs and the implications deepen. GLP-1s are reshaping not just how much users eat, but how whole households’ shop and eat. For the first time, powerful forces changing what people eat are coming from outside the food system itself.”
He points to recent findings from Bramble Intelligence, which predicts ‘nutrient quality per bite’ will become the next unit of competition.
For food companies, he says the consequence will be “stark”, with businesses having to make money from selling fewer calories not more.
“Nutrient density per bite stops being a health aspiration and becomes a commercial imperative,” he adds.
“This also radically changes the ultra-processed food debate. Too often it is framed as manufacturers defending processing while critics demand less of it. That is the wrong choice.
“The answer is better processing, using the industry’s capabilities to make everyday food actively good for the human body.
“Bread is where all this gets real. And by bread I mean the wrapped, sliced white loaf, recently more likely to be demonised than imagined as part of the solution.
“Bread is the west’s staple food. Given the goal is better population health, we will not get there through yet another wave of premium sourdough, protein and mono-fibre loaves. We get there by making familiar foods millions actively eat better for the human body.”
Campbell is clear that the science to do this already exists, the next step is about scaling it.
“The job is now to put it to work in mainstream food; designing high-impact nutrition into everyday products and proving the effects with robust human data so that ‘healthy’ cannot simply be claimed by whoever has the biggest marketing budget.”
He is firm that Modern Baker has shown this is possible: “Modern Baker has demonstrated through Superloaf, in human studies, that an industrially manufactured everyday bread can deliver measurable metabolic benefits. Its partnership with Hovis has already begun putting that science into the mainstream bread aisle.”
For Campbell, he believes this gives Hovis Bakeries a powerful starting point.
“The opportunity is to explore how quickly that principle can be taken across a mainstream category without asking consumers to change what they eat, how they live or pay significantly more for health.
“That is why ABF ownership matters. With its scale, food expertise and long-term horizon, it can turn ‘Nourishing the Nation’ from a mission statement into category leadership.
“And if Hovis can make that real in bread, the significance reaches far beyond bakery. It would offer a model for an industry that will have to make its money from fewer calories while making each one work harder and give the UK an opportunity not merely to adapt to the next era of food but to lead it.”
He concludes: “That would be good news for consumers, for the food industry and for UK plc. And very good news indeed for the NHS.”