Mushrooms soups and capsules to fight vitamin D deficiency
07 Nov 2019 | Scelta Mushrooms
At Anuga 2019, Scelta Mushrooms were exhibiting how they are pushing the functional capacities of mushrooms to the limit. Following its Novel Food approval, the company has now launched mushroom-based soups and capsules which deliver high on vitamin D. Up to now, most vitamin D products have been animal-based, which sets this offering aside from the market norm, Lansbergen notes.
This is Lami Haig reporting from E, Cologne, Germany.
I'm here with Rio Landsbergen of Skelton mushrooms.
They are spotlighting their powdered mushroom soups and capsules which deliver high on vitamin D.
Rico, can you tell me about the R&D process which led to this novel food reaching the market?
Yes, I can.
If you look at nature, it's possible for vitamin D, captured in mushrooms.
So we are in the business for mushrooms for many years.
And after '93, our current owner said we want to do everything with mushrooms.
Not the obvious, but also look what is possible in nature with mushrooms to get healthy and tasty food.
And in that process we learned that mushrooms have a capability like we ourselves in our skin.
Can build vitamin D by coming into the sun.
So then we got on on that and we learned that we had to get a food approval to make it a commercial product.
Made a process.
We described the process.
We tested it, and then we went to the EFSA to get this approval by adding UV light in the production process.
So now it's really officially a novel.
For the EU, OK, and so what you said apart from other vitamin D items that that is the first plant-based products are animal-based vitamin D products.
Yes.
And is that really important, do you think, to the modern consumer?
Yes, it is if you look at Vegan and vegetarian side of it, it will be a very good benefit for them to be able to have a vitamin product, a vitamin D in this kind they can use without having an animal-based product.
And is the vitamin D deficiency an issue we see?
Yeah, it's a worldwide issue.
And what we see is that deficits of 40 to 50% is quite average all over the world, in the countries where we have a lot of sun.
So this will be available on the global market.
We started with the capsules.
2 weeks ago and the soup also and the capsules, for example, are sold on Amazon and we already see a lot of demands on that.
So yes.
Brilliant.
I can't wait to see what happens next.
Thank you very much.
