Vitafoods Europe 2024 live: Cargill spotlights innovations for “health that lasts a lifetime”

15 May 2024 --- Cargill is showcasing its lifespan innovations in the early life nutrition (ELN), active lifestyle nutrition and active aging categories at Vitafoods Europe in Geneva, Switzerland (May 14–16). These include solutions that can enhance the first 1000 days of a child’s life to solutions that address the needs of the world’s aging population.

At the event, Nutrition Insight sits down with Marjan Skotnicki-Hoogland, the company’s managing director for specialized nutrition and supplements, to discuss some of these solutions and the trends they speak to.

“If you look at the first 1000 days, it’s really where early life nutrition begins,” Skotnicki-Hoogland explains. “If you look at the growth of a young child, it develops very fast in the first 12–24 months and we have products which are really supporting that.”

“Cargill has been very successful over the last 40 years already building up its position as a global producer of ingredients for infant formula and a supplier for infant grade oils and infant grade carbohydrates.”

The importance of DHA
According to Skotnicki-Hoogland, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) has been a major player in the prenatal, infant and ELN arena for a very long time and has been shown to benefit infants’ and young children’s developing brains.

However, she notes that the source of the DHA plays a large role for infants and young children outside of the proven cognitive and neurodevelopmental benefits.

“There’s a lot of DHA that comes from fish oil, but there’s also a chance that DHA from fish oil will become more scarce,” says Skotnicki-Hoogland. “We’ve all been overfishing the oceans and, of course, climate change is also a factor.”

Marjan Skotnicki-Hoogland, Cargill’s managing director for specialized nutrition and supplements.“Due to this, a lot of consumers are looking for a more sustainable source and that is why algae is such great alternatives for DHA — it’s a more sustainable source.”

Skotnicki-Hoogland further explains that sourcing DHA from algae instead of fish simplifies the supply chain, as fish also get their DHA from the algae they eat and other fish they eat.

“Why would you need to take it from the fish and further process it? Whereas, we just go one step down the value chain and create it in a more sustainable way, answering to those consumers who would like to have a vegan and an animal-friendly option.”

She highlights that algae-sourced DHA not only gives a healthy start in life, but it has been shown to have lasting effects on children’s brain development.

It also cuts out the fishy taste for mothers who take it when they are pregnant, a time when they may be more prone to nausea and aware of fishy tastes and smells.

Active adults
According to Cargill, an aging population and an increase in consumer demand for products that address active aging and active lifestyle solutions have driven innovation in these expanding areas.

“So now you’re in the middle of life, and Cargill’s purpose is to nourish you in every phase and every stage of life,” Skotnicki-Hoogland details. “Now we’re seeing that everybody would like to have the opportunity to have lots of very healthy years at the end of their life — for health that lasts a lifetime.”

“So you have to do something in the middle and that’s really where we see more and more consumers moving into an active lifestyle and we would like to help our customers to win in these strategic fields,” she concludes.

“So active nutrition really brings everything together and we are here with the solutions to help our customers enable their consumers to live a healthier and happier life.”

By William Bradford Nichols, live at Vitafoods Europe 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland

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