Three square meals a day: Traditional eating patterns key to boosting digestive health markets, Kerry report says

12 Sep 2019 --- About 85 percent of consumers are interested in buying products with digestive health benefits, but only 45 percent actually do, a Kerry consumer report found. Based on the study, the company – which manufactures probiotic GanedenBC30 – identified the traditional pattern of breakfast, lunch and dinner as a potential key to boosting digestive health markets. Despite a growingly popular snacking and “fourth meal” culture, the fundamental principle of three meals a day remains resilient, according to the company, which in turn boosts the demand for probiotics.

“Breakfast, lunch and dinner – maybe with a few snacks in-between – have been the way billions of humans have eaten for centuries. Mealtimes, therefore, represent a golden opportunity for food and beverage manufacturers to deliver the many benefits of probiotics and other digestive health ingredients. Aligning innovative products to these specific occasions makes it easy for consumers to incorporate them into their diets,” says John Quilter, VP & General Manager for Kerry’s ProActive Health Division.

Kerry seeks to further strengthen its position in branded health and nutrition ingredients, with an expansion into probiotics for supplement applications likely. Following initial success in the integration of the Wellmune (immune health) and Ganeden BC30 (digestive health) lines, the Irish-headquartered company will be eyeing further health ingredient opportunities.

“The probiotics sector is thriving due to consumer awareness and an increasingly proactive approach to digestive health. GanedenBC30 is a spore-forming probiotic with a protective shell that shields it from both stomach acids and most food-processing conditions, including heat, shear, HTST, and HPP pasteurization. Because it is so hardy it opens up a wide range of opportunities to innovate by integrating probiotics into everyday foods and beverages,” Quiltervtells NutritionInsight.

About 85 percent of consumers are interested in buying products with digestive health benefits.“The plan is very much to invest more, particularly in the digestive health and immune health spaces. But there are other areas that would have our interest,” Quilter told our sister website FoodIngredientsFirst, confirming that growth will primarily be through acquisition rather than in-house nutrition R&D.

Furthermore, Quilter says that probiotics are now firmly in the mainstream. That’s largely due to the fact that they can now be incorporated into most everyday products. The Kerry range goes way beyond categories traditionally associated with probiotics, such as yogurt, and now includes teas and coffees, oatmeal, granola, muffins, noodles, chips, and peanut butter. “One of the few formulation challenges is in shelf-stable beverages, but our partners have found solutions through cap dispensers and straw technologies,” he says.

Breakfast
According to the company, incorporating probiotics into popular breakfast items such as waffles and pancakes taps into demand for nutritious products at the start of the day. They can also help restore the health credentials of cereals – a category that is increasingly demonized for high sugar content. Meanwhile, drinks associated with breakfast are fertile ground for innovation: the number of new hot beverage and juice launches with a probiotic or digestive claim has risen by 22.4 percent since 2014.

Lunch
Snacks are a popular choice at lunchtime and enhancing them with probiotics can be a key driver of purchasing decisions. Research among consumers who tend not to buy snacks has found that nearly four in ten would be more likely to do so if they contained probiotics or claimed digestive health benefits.

Dinner
Prepared evening meals could offer excellent opportunities for fortification with probiotics. Certain categories, instant pasta for example, are particularly ripe for innovation. Frozen meals also offer potential, with 23 percent of consumers saying they would be more likely to buy them if they contained probiotics or claimed digestive health benefits.

Challenging aspects
Many probiotic strains are fragile and need to be refrigerated, making it hard to offer digestive health benefits in products beyond the dairy aisle, according to the dairy company. Things have changed, thanks to the emergence of hardy spore-forming bacteria that are much more resistant to the extremes of pH, heat, cold and pressure and a better fit for the fortification into everyday products.

GanedenBC30 (Bacillus coagulans GBI-30, 6086) is a spore-forming probiotic, patented strain with a protective shell that shields it from stomach acids and most food processing conditions, including heat, shear and HPP pasteurization. This enables manufacturers to integrate probiotics into a wide range of everyday foods and beverages, says Kerry.  

GanedenBC30 is a probiotic ingredient found in more than 900 leading food and beverage products around the world. It is a shelf-stable, science-backed probiotic strain that has been shown to provide digestive health, immune health and protein utilization benefits. Unlike most other probiotic strains, GanedenBC30is a spore-former, which makes it highly stable and allows it to remain viable throughout most manufacturing processes and the low pH of stomach acid. 

Easy to formulate into functional food, beverages and companion animal products, GanedenBC30 is backed by over 25 published papers. Moreover, being part of Kerry’s ProActive Health portfolio, GanedenBC30 is also natural, vegan, Non-GMO Project verified, organic and allergen-free.

Edited by Kristiana Lalou