Food as medicine: Informed early adopters can help create a functional foods dynamic, says Kerry exec

13 May 2019 --- Functional foods innovators must look beyond the complexities of achieving health claims by communicating directly to early adopters. Furthermore, platforms such as personalized nutrition will accelerate and solutions to reduce stress and enhance sleep quality hold vast potential for growth. This is according to Albert McQuaid, Global Chief Technology Officer at Kerry Taste & Nutrition.

“Today consumers are being informed through multiple other means and not merely relying on regulators to make the decisions for them,” McQuaid told NutritionInsight at Vitafoods Europe in Geneva last week. “They are going through social media and other information sources and are building their knowledge themselves. It is that knowledge base the industry can look to speak more directly to the consumer,” he adds.

For McQuaid, these early adopters understand the context as they are well informed, which in turn creates a dynamic for these nutritionals. He points to the examples of green tea and apple cider vinegar as thriving in this environment. “There are not a lot of claims that you can make on those products, yet the growth of those materials within the industry is beyond double-digits at this stage,” he points out. “That is because the early adopters have been informed, which has created a mass belief. That belief is then reflected in the trends in the marketplace,” he adds.

Kerry Taste & Nutrition at Vitafoods 2019At Vitafoods Europe 2019, McQuaid was speaking on the topic of “Food as medicine – consumer fantasy, industry pixie dust, or a science success story?” He pondered on delivering on-trend foods with a health halo, while ensuring consumers get the health benefit they expect from a product and also aligning with the regulatory framework that exists.

The notion of “food as medicine” is a highly topical one to consider, as Vitafoods Europe has in itself evolved to feature more traditional food ingredients suppliers (including Kerry) than in the past, when it served purely as a nutraceutical event. “The whole advent of functional foods is growing very strongly and people have a bit of pill fatigue. We see that trend growing very strongly, particularly in the North American market, but also in Europe,” he says.

McQuaid notes that expansion is occurring in the use of natural extracts and the perceived role that foods and food ingredients have as nutritional sources. This is, in turn, begs the question: Can food serve as a medicine or a drug? While the food industry does see “food as food,” it has physiological benefits and this is shifting the dynamic.

He points to a US consumer study that Kerry conducted on 1,000 people which illustrated that the concept of “food as medicine” and a clear influencer of their well-being is very real. “The food they consume, the quantity and type are going to have a major influence on that. They are really conscious of that and making a conscientious decision as they buy products. They are not only thinking about taste and likeability but also about what will it do for me? Will it create a need-state?” he adds.

“The journey that we are on is that certain consumers are consuming products because they believe in their benefits,” says McQuaid. “Traditional habits have been that traditional medicines can address some need-states that they have. The industry has over the years been trying to bridge that gap between that belief and the clinical evidence to prove that there is a real benefit here,” he notes.

Albert McQuaid, Global Chief Technology Officer at Kerry Taste & NutritionBut this presents its challenges as it can be tough to prove efficacy in complex food systems, as opposed to when used in a drug format. “Food is a complex system and is not an individual compound and never will be. The clinical benefits of food products are never going to be as dramatic as they would be with a clinical drug, but you will see benefits,” he stresses.

With this background, the industry is significantly investing in research and clinical trials, but there are challenges involved in proving efficacy. “Some of the work being done at a clinical level ends up in the form of in vitro tests, but we know that most of the food is going to go through your digestive system and is going to get modified again,” he points out. “It will go through your system in a vast and complex metabolic pathway and it is going to undergo many changes. That is where the science gap is right now. People are looking at in vitro models and trying to extrapolate that into a complex in vivo system,” says McQuaid. In the case of the microbiome, it is about understanding a highly complex system where consumers have highly varied diets.

For McQuaid, industry’s responsibility lies in building a credible level of science to show that when a product is positioned in this space – whether it has a health claim on it or not – it must have credible supporting data that it aids that given need-state. “If you take a product like Wellmune [a dispersible yeast beta-glucan] or Ganeden products [probiotics], we have done over 20 studies on Wellmune. For Ganeden, there are over 10 clinical studies. Can we get an EFSA claim in the EU or a claim in the US? The answer is probably not. These are complex food systems and it is going to be hard to get to the thresholds that regulators are looking for,” he adds.

While McQuaid concedes that the tough regulatory environment has made people think once or twice about a market launch, the dynamic can be navigated. “From our perspective, it hasn’t hampered our innovation and we are seeing that as long as we bring strong credible science and behave responsibly in what we do, we are fully informed with our customers and consumers, our business will grow,” he adds.

For McQuaid, the key trends in the industry relate to microbiome and personalized nutrition. “The probiotics space is growing very strongly for us. There is a belief in probiotics and their benefits on the microbiome. For some traditional ingredients that have been around for a while, such as omega 3s, there is still a very strong belief in those products that may have tapered off somewhat compared to the hype 5-10 years ago. But it is still robust growth and consumers still believe in these products,” he adds.

Where consumers really want to get benefits from their nutrition are in the areas of sleep, mood and cognition. “We start to see those areas coming to the fore. The level of science to back those up is still low, but because consumer demand is there we will see more science emerging in the years ahead,” he notes.

Kerry positions sleep and mood platforms within a broad area where stress is linked to sleep. “If you manage stress, you can manage sleep,” says McQuaid. “We have done a lot of work on our ingredients around stress and stress management. Our Wellmune ingredient has multiple studies done whereby it improves people’s focus and reduces stress levels. We have shown benefits there,” he notes.

McQuaid admits that support for the sleep sector is in itself undeveloped at this stage apart from melatonin and the milk-derived nutritional Lactium from Ingredia Nutritionals.

Kerry presented a Vegan Protein Water concept at Vitafoods Europe 2019, containing ProDiem and Wellmune.Personalized nutrition was a key talking point at this year’s event, but it is not very clearly defined. Hyper-fragmentation is happening, with much smaller segments being targeted and a one-to-one approach emerging.

“We would look at it as spanning from the very personalized to the category personalized,” says McQuaid on defining the platform. “You could take something like lactose intolerance and consider that there are products out there for people with lactose intolerance or celiac disease. So we are making products for a specific group of consumers,” he notes.

At Vitafoods Europe, the platform was mainly being promoted by suppliers such as DSM, which has several partnerships in place, including one for eye health with opticians. But it is work around the microbiome and DNA analysis as a whole that has been particularly pronounced.

“We see a lot of people looking at DNA analysis to see whether they can profile these things. The science gap is still there between DNA analysis and the foods you should consume. There is a gap, with some leaps of faith being had around your DNA analysis. But that is the direction of travel,” says McQuaid.

Mainstream adoption will be some way down the line, however. “Just like any industry, you start small and begin exploring these fringe areas and some of those will become more mainstream. I think it could go more mainstream, but it could take another 10-15 years before that is the case,” he concludes.

By Robin Wyers