Vitafoods Europe 2025: Döhler’s natural superfoods boost weight management and holistic health
06 Jun 2025 | Döhler
Dr. Alexander Smerz, head of Döhler’s Business Unit Health, highlighted the company’s Natural SuperHeroes portfolio with health ingredients formulated into different formats at Vitafoods Europe. He introduced the company’s GLP-1 Boosting Powder Meal Drinks, which help boost naturally-occurring GLP-1 hormones with science-backed ingredients and can be part of consumers’ daily routine. Döhler also displayed a new nutraceutical format, Freeze-dried Nutritional Drops, a low-calorie, plant-based format that melts on the tongue.
This is Yolande von Ral from Nutrition Insight.
I'm here at Vidifest Europe 2025 with Dr.
Alexander Schmetz, who is the head of business unit health at Doer.
Thank you for joining us.
Great to see you, Yolanda.
Thank you.
And I know you have lots of products at Doer, but I also see that your product portfolio showcases this range of natural superheroes.
Can you explain what the concept is behind that range and how it reflects your?
Commitment to innovation and functional ingredients.
I think we are much into natural products anyway, so these superheroes were born from the idea that these kinds of natural products, they do more than anything we have classically in terms of being juices, in terms of being powders of trees.
They are there to also physically promote.
So that is why they are superheroes.
They fly in and they make you stronger, they make you more intelligent, make you.
For a little bit exaggerated, but that is the base concept, and I think the innovation about it is that we are also playing them into different formats.
We can play them into dry.
We can play them into liquid.
We can do a lot of applications for them, and that is why we use them also as a platform for us to get into the next steps of migration of evolution.
One of the products I wanted to look at is your.
One booster powder meal drinks which I understand are designed to support satiety, weight management.
How does it stand out in that category and how do you ensure its effectiveness?
It's a very good question, and that is the hot topic since we have started to know about side effects of diabetic medication and certainly as the food industry, I think it is also important to kind of Foster and promote the natural process which is happening in our body.
So on the one hand you have the GLP-1 story of medical stuff where you get something which is a much more stable.
Molecule than what we produce ourselves, but our concept or the food concept is to promote the generation of GLP-1 which is naturally occurring and that is kind of where we said, OK, let's see on which kind of ingredients have science behind.
How can we generate from that science a nice product which is nicely tasting, which you certainly don't take once a month only.
This is a daily routine because we will not get the hormone being more stable by just fostering its generation, but that is kind of the concept which we see getting it more prominently produced rather than putting something else into the body which would generate the same effect for long term medical versus nutrition and I also Your next generation super powder supplement blends and I'd love to hear more about the formulations or health benefits of those products.
That is also a nice one.
So I think that the market has turned a lot into also consumers, especially young consumers, understanding on the effect of superfoods and you have, for instance, those.
Green superfood mixes which are around and we also thought about how can we further extend that.
We got into super reds, we get into super blues, and there are kind of combinations of valuable natural ingredients which then you get into kind of shake format.
You can get them on the go.
You can prepare them wherever you are and just giving you that extra health shot during the day which might foster a lot of.
Functionalities very interesting.
Super greens.
I see a lot of super blues, not so much.
Turn around and you'll find them.
And I also saw, and I'd love to hear more about the novel freeze dried nutritional drops formats that you have.
How does that improve bioavailability or consumer convenience if we compare it to traditional supplements?
I think for the bioavailability we are not getting to something where you talk about a sophisticated system to actually released a controlled release of molecules which we have in mind, but where we are right now, and that is more getting into the customer experience, giving healthy ingredients into a format which is a low calorie in terms of functionality to caloric content ratio, low calorie extra benefit, easy to snack, something in between, which is simply making that moment.
In the afternoon, in the moment, valuable, and there the format is actually quite nice because it is kind of melting on the tongue.
You don't have to chew.
It is also certainly a plant-based product, so we are not getting into the discussion of what kind of colloids you would use if you compare it to gummies.
So we think it is an evolution of getting from capsules and tablets to gummies to then get into the drops, and we find great resonance on them of people thinking that could be a really Next format for that in between healthy something interesting.
Finally, I would love to hear more about key trends that you observed functional ingredients around here and how Doer is planning to innovate further to meet consumer trends or industry demands.
And there again now you talk to someone coming from a health perspective.
I think the major trend which also we see around here is that people all of a sudden really talk mass market.
Health effects of food rather than seeing health ingredients somewhere in the supplements market only.
That is something which is fundamental and I think the change will become further pronounced.
I think we need it as a society we need it because our health security systems are getting to the borderline of costing, so that is a good reason to get more from curing to prevention and the prevention is that where everything we have been talking about is also active.
And then getting into a more detailed view, certainly we talk.
About gut health being very, very important.
If you look around, a lot of biotic topics are there.
We are also addressing some of them.
Also, for instance, you talked about the drops.
This is also something where you can get probiotics in, get prebiotics in, so that you have gut health and anything which is a secondary function to it.
And then certainly the entire topic of energy, energizing people, also relaxing.
Those are kind of within the health perspective, the three most important drivers for us right now.
