From gut support to pet health: Redefining nutrition and wellness in the year to come

03 Jan 2024 --- During 2023, the nutrition industry met escalating demands in multiple sectors as areas such as women’s health, immunity support, brain health, mood regulation, the microbiome and pet nutrition saw surges in consumer interest. At the same time, calls for healthier and more sustainable options in foods and supplements put the environment and the circular economy to the forefront of innovation.

Nutrition Insight sits down with professionals from dsm-firmenich, FrieslandCampina Ingredients, Ingredion and Univar Solutions to discuss some of this year’s major developments and trends.

“Biotis Fermentis is our latest innovation and it is designed specifically to help sporters with digestive comfort issues,” says Vicky Davies, the global senior marketing director for performance, active and medical nutrition at FrieslandCampina Ingredients. “It’s a combination of whey protein, galactooligosaccharide (GOS) and probiotics, fermented together into a unique holistic solution, which is proven in studies to help the gut health issues of sporters.”

Vanessa Bailey, the global strategic manager for nutrition, health and wellness at Ingredion, tells us that the year presented several opportunities for ingredients that address needs, such as cleaner labels, healthier formulations and formula cost stability.

Toni Farinella, the regional lead for early life nutrition (ELN) at dsm-firmenich, told us about the company’s push to increase nutritional health for perinatal women.

“One of our key initiatives is our Every Day Counts campaign. We went down to Washington DC, US, in April of 2023 and launched our campaign there, really advocating for better access to high dose docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) for women at childbearing age,” Farinella explains. “Recently, there have been many studies that have brought to light the fact that women are at very high risk of preterm birth.”

“This is a big initiative for the March of Dimes as well, and so, we’re taking the initiative with Congress to try to increase access to better supplementation and specifically with algal DHA.”

Meanwhile, Tamar Serapian, the technical business development manager for nutraceuticals at Univar Solutions, highlights the recent parallels between human and pet nutrition.

Boosting performance via gut health
Davies states that FrieslandCampina Ingredients concentrates on leveraging innovative ingredients to offer health benefits to its customers.

She notes that the company has already established a significant presence in the sports nutrition sector and that it has noticed that many athletes struggle with gut health problems, which can be attributed to the physical stress from their sports activities and dietary factors.

“So with Fermentis, we are tackling those issues with a holistic solution,” she spotlights. “It’s one of its kind, it’s unique and there’s nothing else like it on the market. We see it as a game changer in sports nutrition, but it’s also suitable for the average active nutrition customer or for the consumer who is looking after their gut health and exercising regularly.”

FrieslandCampina Ingredients notices that many athletes struggle with gut health problems, which can be attributed to the physical stress from their sports activities and dietary factors.“The combination of whey protein with prebiotic and GOS fermented together with a probiotic into one fermented product or powder, which is also rich in metabolites, has been shown to be significantly beneficial to gut health and gut comfort, but also for the stress levels and energy levels of those who take it every day.”

Education as the key to women’s health
Farinella at dsm-firmenich highlights that, in 2024 and beyond, education will be critical in advancing women’s health through nutrition.

“We’re going to continue to get the message out there and to have health care providers, specifically obstetricians, really understand the science and be able to help moms understand that they’re probably not getting an adequate amount of DHA,” Farinella stresses. “The doctor will ask, ‘What are you eating?’ and the answer typically is, ‘I eat some fish,’ and so the doctor says, ‘Oh sure, you’re fine with your DHA status.’ It’s really not the case.”

“You can’t eat enough fish to get the right amounts of DHA while you’re pregnant. That’s where supplementation really gets that message across to the medical community. What’s really interesting with algal DHA is that it’s cleaner, with less contaminants and it has a sustainable profile overall.”

Sustainability and innovation
Bailey at Ingredion says that the company’s unique ATLAS research program confirmed an increasing consumer interest in healthier and more sustainable products.

Moreover, the company found that dealing with rising ingredient costs while managing margins has been a significant challenge for manufacturers, along with the need to differentiate their brands. She further reveals that this insight helped the company to identify opportunities not just for creating new products, but also for innovating with the ingredients already in its portfolio.

“It’s not just the insights that have helped — we’ve used our proprietary business simulator to model the business impact of switching to clean labels or adding an on-pack claim such as ‘added fiber’ or ‘reduced sugar,’” she explains. “This has been instrumental in having more open customer conversations about where the business can go and quantifying potential revenue and margin improvement based on those decisions.”

“Novation Indulge 2940, our first clean label gelling starch, took four years of development but was perfectly timed to address challenging supply and soaring costs of some ingredients. It offers the added benefit of consumer appeal, thanks to its use as a replacement for less preferred ingredients in applications that forced manufacturers to choose between achieving the right texture or having a clean label.”

Ingredion research indicates an increasing consumer interest in healthier and more sustainable products.Additionally, she notes that the company’s Fibertex multi-benefit fibers offer manufacturers an ingredient favored by consumers that is classified as dietary fiber, which allows for associated claims. Additionally, its application as an egg substitute enables manufacturers to explore new markets, enhance nutritional profiles and potentially stabilize or lower formulation costs.

Better health for the whole family
Serapian at Univar Solutions points out that many consumers are looking for nutritional boosts for all of their family members — including the furry ones. She states that a huge trend she has seen in the pet nutrition space is the realization that peoples’ pets have a lot of the same needs as their owners.

“With pets, it’s a lot of gut and joint health, which are sometimes interconnected. Those are kind of the biggest trends we’re seeing, and many people are looking to incorporate a lot of those food and human-grade materials into their pet nutrition products.”

“As far as supplementation, we’ve got products like inulins that act as prebiotics and excipients and we’re seeing a lot of usage of those,” she concludes. “Even some of our anti-inflammatory and joint health products that we actually promote into human nutrition products, we’re seeing incorporated into pet foods and supplements.”

By William Bradford Nichols