Vitafoods Europe 2024: IFF launches concepts for healthy aging as target audience and market grow
24 Jun 2024 | IFF
At this year’s trade show, we spoke to IFF’s Benjamin Milhau, regional marketing lead for the EMEA region and Johanna Maukonen, director of global clinical innovation and translation. Milhau told us about the latest market trends in healthy aging, as younger people increasingly show interest in taking preventive action. He further touched upon the stigma surrounding age and the company’s strategy in addressing it. Also, Maukonen presented three of IFF’s healthy aging concepts — Build, Maintain and Enjoy.
*Howaru GI Complete is not intended for chronic constipation/diarrhea
Hello everybody, this is William Bradford Nichols, the editor for Nutrition Insight, and I'm here live at Vita Food Europe in Geneva, Switzerland.
And today we are speaking with Benjamin Mau, the regional marketing lead for EMEA at IFF Health.
Hello, Benjamin, how are you today?
Hello, I'm good, thank you.
How are you?
I'm great.
We noticed that IFF has some pretty interesting healthy aging innovations that you're presenting this year.
Can you tell me a little bit about what market trends and consumer demands these products might speak to?
Yeah, totally.
So we decided to focus on healthy aging this year, first because.
The global fact is that the population is aging and actually if you look at the projection in Europe, about 40% of the population will be aged over 55 years plus in 2015, so clearly that puts the spot on what should we do to support this aging population, but when we started to work on this, we realized that healthy aging, there's no like unique definition.
And actually depending on the region and the cultures they could be like different meaning, but if we stick to the World Health Organization definition, it's really about maintaining physical and mental capabilities and when we dig into this subject we saw that traditionally healthy aging is addressing seniors like 60 plus people, but looking at recent survey.
We see that younger generation now are also concerned by health aging.
So in a recent survey, 55% of the 18 to 25 years old were like concerned or extremely concerned about health aging.
48% were ready to take proactive action to that, while if we.
Look at the whole generation at the same age, only 7% say they would have taken a proactive steps back then.
So this clearly shows that healthy aging is moving from a more curative approach to a preventive approach as , so broadening really the target consumer group and also we realized that.
This is quite a, there's still an age stigma around health aging, so and and people don't really want to be targeted as a senior and nobody sees itself as a senior, right?
So we realized that maybe instead of talking about age group we should talk.
More about life stages because referring to healthy aging we usually refer to ch chronological age but you know you have also your biological age, you also have your mental age and that really defines in which state you are so we developed this, our new campaign on healthy aging more on life stages, and we came up with three different ones which are called Build, maintain and Enjoy.
And that we will maybe talk to you a bit more in details, but yeah, the whole idea was to bring a new approach to healthy aging through new concepts, forget about the numbers, just the life stage because in the end.
Aging is a unique and personal path, so it's up to the consumers to decide what action they want to take to support their aging and to age and and age overall.
And yes, so that's why we came up with this new campaign at Vita Foods.
All right, thank you so much for talking to us, Benjamin.
And we also have with us today Johanna Malken, the global director for clinical innovation and translation at IFF Health.
Hello, Johanna, how are you today?
Good, thank you.
And you?
Great.
We're also, we just heard from Benjamin about the trends that your products speak to.
Now you have the concepts to show us.
Can you tell us a little bit about the concepts you're representing this year and the health benefits of each?
Yeah, my pleasure.
So we have 3 different concepts.
Been mentioned and this is the first one in the avenue of aging so this is called build and this has 3 different possibilities.
So we did the concepts in mind that we have clinical science for many of our ingredients.
So thinking that for example the first one that we have is inner beauty for the belt.
So then inner beauty contains, for example, our BAC is BO4, which is clinically studied for wrinkles and hydration, and then.
For keratin that is also for skin, hair, and nails, and then ro with vitamin C and zinc, because they're thinking that these are really meant for the European market and in Europe you cannot say anything about probiotics because, the word probiotic by itself is already a health claim.
So that's why then adding some vitamins and minerals would then enable us to claim whatever the health benefit actually is.
Coming from the other active ingredients that we have clinically studied, two other things that we had for the build are vitality lift, which is then, for more immune health, for example, and then we have relax and sleep, which more or less the name already tells what it's about, but it also contains a probiotic and other active ingredient.
Then for the next one we have the maintain, thank you.
We have to maintain, so this is now the next stage of healthy aging and in this one we thought that the most interesting things or the most needed things for the consumer would be, for example, gut comfort.
So that was something that I already had a presentation yesterday on our how are you GI Complete, which is really, as the name says that it's for gut comfort, but the how are you GI Complete is like it's for the whole.
Different kinds of symptoms that you can have in the digestive system and it helps with all of them.
So not just, for example, if you're having more diarrhea type symptoms that it will help there or that if you're having more constipation type symptoms, it would help there, but it really balances the digestive system and help with all kinds of different symptoms.
Then we also have bladder bliss.
This is also for the maintained part, which also more or less the name.
Already tells what it's for also having clinically studied ingredients and then metabolic harmony, which has our how are you shape which is B lactose B420 and then citrilov and chromium because again these are for Europe so then we need to remember that add something so that that whomever would be then selling this would be able to claim something about the product.
And last but not least, thank you.
Enjoy.
So our last product for this healthy aging line, or last, concept, family more or less because then again it it contains several different concepts.
So for this one we have mobility ease, which again the name tells about what it's about.
So it's about joint mobility and it has clinically studied and then for the mind power.
We also have clinically studied ingredients.
So in this one the main is SAP PS, which is a phosphodylusurne, and that for that we have for older population we have clinical data.
And then also we have GutShield which contains one of our clinically studied probiotics for immune health for over 55+.
So these would be three concepts for different 3 life stages for build, maintain, and enjoy.
Perfect.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today, and we look forward to hearing more from IFF Health in the future.
