Infusd Nutrition’s emulsion tech enables functional food formats with non-soluble ingredients

Amid ongoing consumer “pill fatigue,” the nutrition industry is exploring new formats to meet demands for fun and convenient formats, such as gummies and functional foods or beverages. However, it is challenging to include efficacious doses of non-soluble health ingredients in formats beyond traditional pills and capsules. 

To address this issue, Infusd Nutrition has developed a technology that transforms fat-soluble and insoluble nutrients into water-soluble solutions that enhance stability, bioavailability, and performance. 

Nutrition Insight catches up with the company’s co-founder, Jack MacDonald, to find out how its technology enables brands to include difficult-to-formulate ingredients into new formats.

Infusd Nutrition’s co-founder, David Giffin, developed the delivery technology after consuming many different supplements with plant-based omega-3 oils. 

As a vegan triathlete, Giffin wondered whether these nutritional lipids could be added to a beverage, retaining stability and taste.

“That was the big aspiration and his goal. It worked out. He figured out how to mix oil in water,” details MacDonald.

“This is more physics than chemistry. We use a proprietary physical process to make what we call an advanced emulsion or encapsulation system.”

MacDonald notes that this physical process doesn’t rely on chemical additives, emulsifiers, or surfactants to make the products work.

For example, at this year’s Natural Products Expo West trade show, Infusd Nutrition showcased a beverage with a wealth of trendy, functional ingredients, such as lion’s mane, ashwagandha, bacopa, and rhodiola. 

Jack MacDonald, co-founder of Infusd Nutrition.MacDonald says these botanicals are insoluble and don’t typically taste good when included in food or beverages. However, by using Infusd Nutrition’s technology, the company was able to include high levels of these ingredients, without impacting the drink’s taste or texture. 

“We get 800 mg of lion’s mane, which is more than you would get in a capsule,” he details. “We can put really high, efficacious doses of these science-backed health ingredients in delicious formats instead of taking a pill.”

Symrise partnership boosts palatability

Not long after Infusd Nutrition first launched its solution in 2023, legacy flavor house Symrise became interested in the technology. “We started working on a partnership immediately,” says MacDonald.

“For over a year now, we’ve been technology partners with Symrise,” he details. “We work in their health business unit on the single-ingredient side. We have a whole portfolio of omega-3s that we do together.”

“We’re also part of their systems business unit, which takes any functional ingredient and puts that into a functional system. We provide the functional stack and make sweetener system recommendations, and then they provide the flavor system. Then we can take it to customers as a turnkey solution.”

MacDonald notes that large and small consumer packaged goods companies often either don’t have an internal R&D department or have considerably cut spending in that area.

“What they want is something that’s turnkey, ready to launch. Now we’ve got flavor and function all in one with Symrise,” says MacDonald.

“They’re a legacy company while we’re a two-year-old start-up; it’s cool to see us next to each other. It gives our start-up a lot of extra credibility and helps Symrise go to market with something unique.”

Scaling innovations

MacDonald notes that Symrise has given Infusd Nutrition access to its global key accounts to present its solutions.

“We’re working with them, and then we can also deliver different concepts for start-ups and smaller brands. So it helps us push what we have into the market with a great distribution partner, who also makes everything taste great.”

Infusd Nutrition enables companies to use functional ingredients in gummies or beverages, instead of traditional pills and capsules.After the company’s product launch in 2023, Infusd Nutrition has done substantial scale-up work, moving into a new facility and expanding the team.

In addition to Symrise, the company has collaborated with GC Rieber VivoMega, Anderson Advanced Ingredients, and Caldic, focusing on the US and Europe.

“One of our other partners is Griffith Foods, a big ingredient company. We’re doing a lot of work with them globally,” says MacDonald. “We’ve developed a natural preservative with the company, a complete replacement for potassium sorbate in sodium benzoate.”

He explains that this preservative is based on a botanical solution Griffith Foods discovered, but uses Infusd Nutrition’s technology because the botanical is oil-soluble. The technology neutralizes the flavor and makes it fully water-soluble, so it can go into any sauce, dressing, or soup.

“We have over 60 active customer projects, all based around different ingredients,” he adds. “We are very busy in the lab, hiring one new scientist every three to four weeks.”

“The only thing that’s really limited our growth so far has been the time it takes to develop a product and get it into the market with a CPG brand. But now a lot of that work has been done, so products are being launched.”

Countering pill fatigue

Infusd Nutrition’s process is generally recognized as safe (GRAS), and the particles are within the normal range, not nanotechnology.

MacDonald says the company has worked with hundreds of different, non-soluble ingredients.

The response from the industry has been great, as some did not think it was possible to create water-soluble particles with some of these ingredients. He notes: “People are really excited about what we’re doing, some of them are blown away.”

“Pill fatigue is a very real thing; that’s what our business is based on,” MacDonald concludes. “We help take their ingredients and enable them for different applications. Instead of putting these ingredients in pills, they can now put them in gummies or beverages.”