Cerebelly combines neuroscience and nutrition in baby foods

06 Aug 2020 --- Brain-focus baby snack brand Cerebelly has expanded its portfolio to 1,500 Target retailers throughout the US. Each Cerebelly baby food serving contains up to 18 targeted nutrients, supporting babies’ sight, hearing, memory and social awareness. Together with its offerings at Whole Foods and Kroger, the Target launch brings Cerebelly’s retail footprint to 4,000 stores across the nation.

“We’ve created a product that provides the right nutrients at the right time to best support [children’s] early brain development. By partnering with Target, we’re able to bring Cerebelly to more people than ever and further our brand mission of giving every baby the right nutritional foundation to help them reach their full potential,” says Dr. Teresa Purzner, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Cerebelly.

Since its launch last October, Cerebelly has grown revenues by 1,000 percent and produced over two million pouches in that time, with a pouch sold every 15 seconds in 2020 to date, the company states. Moreover, Cerebelly had initially launched online with a personalized nutrition subscription service, but then quickly expanded to 500 Whole Foods stores and 2,000 Kroger stores. 

At Target, Cerebelly’s age-optimized Variety Packs – a box of three pouches – will retail for US$7.99. Many stores will also carry some of Cerebelly’s flavors as individual pouches for US$2.69 each. Subscriptions at Cerebelly.com range from US$2.31 to US$2.89 per pouch, depending on quantities purchased.

Baby brain boosters
When shopping for baby food for her own children, Dr. Purzner was “shocked and disappointed” by her options, the company highlights. “Too often, the baby foods on store shelves had zero percent of the daily value of the nutrients she believed were important for a baby’s growing brain.” NutritionInsight recently reported on how the baby food market may overlook nutritional needs to make sales.

The fruit and vegetable mixes provide babies up to 18 nutrients supporting cognitive function and brain development.Consequently, Dr. Purzner developed Cerebelly snacks, which include a combination of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), lutein, protein, vitamin A, D and E, choline, copper, selenium, zinc, iodine, cobalamin, folate, pyridoxine, niacin and iron. The Cerebelly website allows prospective consumers to explore each nutrient’s function in brain development, foods that are rich in a particular nutrient and weblinks to scientific papers that provide evidence for these findings.

Cerebelly is currently available in ten fruit and vegetable-combining flavors, such as spinach apple sweet potato and white bean pumpkin apple, for example. 

Innova Market Insights pegged “Hello Hybrids” as its number seven trend for 2020. As consumers are highly receptive to hybrid products, there is ample opportunity for blending specific ingredients and category fusions, creating innovative food products with demand for genuine novelty continuing to grow. In this space, the market researcher recently revealed that babies emulate adults with snacking and free-from trends.

The company reviews the organic and non-GMO certifications of its local Californian ingredient suppliers to ensure that its product contents are fully plant-derived, dairy-free, gluten-free and without any added sugars. Samples from each Cerebelly batch made are also tested by an independent third-party for heavy metals before it is released for sale.

Personalized nutrition for babies
To establish which of Cerebelly’s ten offerings would benefit babies best, Cerebelly provides an online quiz for parents to complete. Personalized questions regarding babies’ age, gender, cognitive abilities, motor functions and social competencies determine which nutrients would support individual babies’ needs. 

This taps into the personalized nutrition trend, where industry has become quick to understand that “one size fits all” health recommendations don’t fit the bill anymore. In the children’s health space specifically, Nestlé India piloted the nation’s first artificial intelligence nutrition assistant developed with Google called NINA to provide parents seeking nutritional information for their children’s health needs.

By Anni Schleicher