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Nurturing Young Brains through Better Nutrition
26 Sep 2023 | Balchem Human Nutrition & Health
With the end of summer approaching, parents are gearing up for the annual ritual of getting ready for the new school year. Beyond school supplies, prioritizing good nutrition is vital for optimal school performance. Choline and iron are key players in the healthy development of children. Join Oliver Riemann and Eric Ciappio, from Balchem Corporation as they present scientific evidence supporting the significant role of choline and iron in enhancing cognitive function among children and delve into global data on #dietary intake and nutrient gaps.
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Hello, and welcome to today's webinar titled Nurturing Young Brains Through Better Nutrition by Balcomm Human Nutrition.
My name is William Bradford Nichols, and I'm the editor of Nutrition Insight.
Nutrition Insight is a world-leading B2B news and insights website published by CNS Media.
We are joined today by our expert speakers, Doctor Eric Capio, Nutrition Science Manager at Balcombe Corporation, and Oliver Raymond, Balcom's senior marketing and BED manager.
We also have Laura Cedente, a marketing analyst at CNS Media.
In a short while, our speakers will give a presentation on some of the main nutrients and ingredients essential to boosting kids' brains as they develop throughout life and get ready to go back to school.
We will also look at Balcombe's iron ingredient Ferrical and its choline solution vinycholine and examine some of the science and health benefits surrounding these offerings.
Before we get started, I'd like to remind our listeners that they can submit questions to our speakers through the Q&A engagement tool.
Any questions that we don't have time to respond to during today's session can be answered via email following the presentation.
The webinar will also be available on-demand on nutritionInsight.com, and the link to view the on-demand webinar will be emailed to you after the presentation.
With that, let's begin today's webinar with our speakers' presentations before we round off with a Q&A session.
Over to you, Laura.
Thank you, William.
Today I will present you NPD trends on product launches that support brain health development for children.
First, I would like to emphasize that there is a general increase in functional food and beverage launches for children, and today we particularly look at NPD in Europe, US, and APEC countries.
There's a +4% annual average growth from July 2018 to June 2023, and the launches are especially increasing towards 2023.
And you can also pay attention to this example, it's a dragon berry flavored drink with a vitamin C and zinc, and it is claimed on the packaging that it boosts the brain's fullest potential and helps immunity.
And now we will deep dive into trends for brain health launches for children.
We can see that baby and toddlers take a bit more than 50% of shares in percentage for the NPD, but you can also see other categories in this list, such as dairy, cereals, and soft drinks.
And these all contain brain health development claims that are specifically aimed for kids.
And pay attention to this example as.
It is a super milk with protein and DHA and it boosts brain development for children from 4 to 7 years.
And now we're going to dive deeper into subcategories for brain health development in children, and we can see that baby formula and milk is the leading one, but the flavored milk and drinking yogurt is also on the top, which shows that lots of beverages are more competitive to incorporate these brain health claims for children.
And now we will see the subcategories that have most increased in launches in the last 5 years.
So these are the most innovative subcategories.
And here you can also see beverage subcategories growing very fast.
For example, juices and nectars have a 41% growth, and you can also see this example of juice drink with the choline and vitamins for brain health development.
And then there is dairy alternative drinks that has a 15% growth, and there is an example of plant-based drink that has magnesium for cognitive function.
And finally, there's a drinking yogurt and fermented beverages that are also gaining ground for brain health development and specially targeted for kids.
And lastly, we will talk about some hero ingredients for children's brain health.
And here I'm going to point out two ingredients.
So one is iron, and iron has a 16% average annual growth from July 2018 to June 2023.
And you can also see this example with cereal that has iron, and the cereal helps brain growth for children.
And another of these ingredients is Colleen bittertrate.
It has a 4% growth, and you can also see how this, this is incorporated in a functional beverage in this pediatric shake.
And finally, you also see how this milk powder for kids emphasizes that chole, is called a brain developer.
So these ingredients are already marked as these hero ingredients, and these ingredients that are key to brain health development.
And this is all for now.
I will give the word to you, Oliver.
All right, thank you very much.
So let's start with Balcom at a glances.
The company was founded in 1967.
We are New York Stock Exchange listed and making almost $1 billion US dollars revenue.
The company covers three business segments, and today we talk about the biggest one, the healthcare and nutrition segment.
Making the world a healthier place, that is what we're here for.
And here you see how we do that on a high level.
But in particular, if you look at the woman with the baby on the right side, we provide food and beverage and supplement ingredients to several health benefit platforms.
And we also provide ingredients for prenatal, infant, and toddler nutrition, and exactly that is the topic we are going to talk about today, and we will show you how to use two of our hero ingredients for child nutrition.
And with that, I'm going to handing over to Eric Capio, who's going to introduce you to the science behind.
All right.
Thanks, Oliver.
So my name is Eric Capio.
I'm part of the nutrition science team here at Bchem.
I'm gonna run through a little bit of the background about why nutrition is important for kids and for expecting moms, and then go into a little bit of data on two of our products, specifically, ferrous bisglycine and choli.
So, first up, what nutrients even support a child's brain health?
And how do we find out what that sort of list is?
The American Academy of Pediatrics semi-recently published a guide on improving nutrition for the 1st 1000 days of a child's life to help support neurological development into adulthood.
They named the laundry list of nutrients that are involved in neurological development.
But there's two in particular we're going to focus on today, namely, iron and cholate, both of which are essential nutrients that have incredibly critical roles in the formation and development of cognitive function of the brain itself and the spinal cord.
The reason we care about this and when we think about how to build a child's brain, it's not necessarily starting during their childhood.
Building their brain, of course, starts literally from, from day 1 or day minus 9 months, depending on your perspective.
Building your brain is a bit like building a house, right?
You need all those raw materials, the lumber, the drywall, the pipes, the wires, etc.
You need all that during the construction phase.
And the construction phase is of course during early life, particularly during development.
Development, of course, brain development continues into childhood and adolescence.
A lot of people think that it stops, you know, somewhere in the, in the sort of early digits, but really, the brain continues to grow into your twenties.
So having an adequate provision of these nutrients during that time is incredibly important to support this development.
And of course, the period where it changes relatively the most is that sort of first beginning tail even prior to that axis.
You can see that during development, the brain essentially grows from effectively nothing into something.
And we can all watch, those of us that are parents, when we see how rapidly our children develop in that first year of life, you can tell.
You see the changes from day to day to day.
And of course, the brain is growing and it needs those raw materials to do so.
Both to build itself and to function just as you and I do.
So, first up, we're gonna talk about an essential nutrient called choline.
So for those of you who are not familiar, choline is an essential nutrient just like vitamin D or iron or vitamin C, etc.
It does have in the US a dietary reference intake which was established in the late 1990s.
This is the 25 year anniversary, as a matter of fact.
In Europe, EFSA recognized it as essential, I think circa 2016 or so.
And even more recently, the Nordic nutrition recommendations recognized choline's essentiality for the first time just early this year.
So what does it do?
Like most nutrients, it really boils down to two basic functions, structural and functional.
So first, it maintains cell membrane integrity.
So it forms the physical cell membranes as a, as a, a downstream derivative called phosphatidylcholine that helps to form the physical architecture of the brain, which again, obviously during development, incredibly important.
2, it helps to support nervous system function by virtue of the fact that choline, as you can probably tell from the name, is an important component of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which plays critical roles in mood, memory, and, muscle control.
And of course, even a sort of a more deeper in the weeds level, it helps to regulate gene expression to control some of these critical functions.
Choline is an incredibly important nutrient both for your brain and for your liver.
What we're gonna focus on right now today.
There's been a lot of interest into looking at the impact of adequate cooling provision, particularly in the maternal diet, given its important role in maintaining brain and spinal cord development.
So, unfortunately, in the interest of time, we're sort of gonna skip a couple of really foundational studies, but if there's ever interest, I'm happy to walk you through them.
But one study in particular is what we call the seven-year study.
So what this group of investigators out of Cornell University did was they took a group of expecting moms entering their third trimester of pregnancy, and they gave them one of two specific diets, basically, about 100% of the, roughly 100% of the, adequate intake for choline in the US, or about twice, that amount, right?
And they randomized these moms.
These were given in a combination of, both prepared diets.
So each group got the same basic prepared diet each day, as as a supplement which contained either 100 or 550 mg of Abitocholine material.
This happened throughout the 3rd trimester, and then once the baby arrived, all supplementation stopped.
And then baby, of course, was sort of free to eat, and mom was free to, to eat as she pleased.
Now, the kids were periodically followed up for cognitive testing assessments throughout that first year of life.
We're not gonna go into some of those data, but suffice it to say, there was some significant improvements, but the interesting thing is what these same investigators did was they followed up with these kids 7 years later, so when they were age 7.
Again, no additional supplementation or dietary changes whatsoever.
They were sort of free to do whatever they felt, was necessary, and they examined these kids for what's called sustained attention.
So how do you measure cognition and sustained attention specifically?
Sustained attention is exactly what it sounds like.
It's your ability to maintain your attention over a prolonged period of time.
So think of a long meeting that you've been in where you feel your thoughts starting to wander, maybe you're watching a movie or reading a book or talking with someone, and you feel your sort of attention drift off.
That's sustained attention.
That's effectively what they were measuring.
So, what they did, with these kids was they had effectively a computer-based test, where they looked at a monitor.
There was a, a signal or non-signal event, basically an image flashed on the screen and the kids sort of had to hit, , as the.
An image flashed on the screen for sort of a short, medium, or long amount of time.
Image goes away, and the kids had to respond, yes, I saw an image or not.
Within a certain amount of time.
And then of course there's some feedback, basically sort of yes, no, ding dinge that sort of thing.
Now, in and of itself, this test is not necessarily, the important thing is really the ability to continue to perform this test over time.
Again, it's a sustained attention.
So what you should pay attention to is the fact that this went on for about 12 minutes, which is a really long time to you or I, but it is an eternity for a 7-year-old child.
That was 216 times of hitting yes or no, I saw an image on screen.
So, you can think of this effectively as the world's most boring video game, and this is what's allowing them to determine how strong their ability to pay attention over time was.
So, we can see some examples of this in action and hopefully, our IT works here.
But this is a child that had a low sustained attention task score.
So we're somewhere in the middle of the test.
He's looking around.
He's not into it.
He's just like, let's get this over with.
This is really boring, right?
Get that into the test.
Now, on the other hand, let's look at a child that had a high sustained detention test score.
Focused, paying attention, his thoughts aren't wandering, he's not bouncing around in his seat.
He's not looking to get out of there.
He's paying attention to the task at hand.
This is what we're talking about.
This is a really great visual, visual that shows exactly what we mean by this.
So what happened, again, what you see is that the kids born to the moms consuming higher amounts of choline had significantly higher scores overall on that sustained detention task test.
So again, this is just a function of mom's diet during pregnancy and these kids are now 7 years old.
So this is an intervention that was effectively 7 years ago, right?
But the important thing, or at least the, the most interesting part, at least, in my view, is what happens when you look at their performance over time.
You can see that in the sort of darker blue here.
The kids that were born for the higher choline consuming moms, their performance stayed about flat as the test went on.
This is trial blocks.
So basically think of it as like periods in a hockey game, so to speak.
So as the trial went on, their performance stayed even, but the kids more to locally consuming moms, their performance declined over time.
So, what you can tell here is that based simply on mom's diet during pregnancy, these kids had significantly improved ability to maintain their sustained attention over time.
And this is incredibly important because sustained attention contributes to a wide variety of higher cognitive functions like problem solving and working memory, and it's even associated with things like school performance overall.
So, incredibly powerful results just from a very short window of intervention years prior.
If you think about that, that's a pretty wild finding.
We're gonna switch gears a little bit.
We're gonna talk about another product, called Ferriquel, which is our chelated form of iron.
So a little bit of background to help sort of cement this.
What is iron?
Iron, just like choline is an essential nutrient, meaning you must obtain it through your diet.
And it plays in one central, very important role, which is helping to transport oxygen around your body.
So there's a very strong need for, for iron at all times.
It's effectively the core of that hemoglobin or myoglobin molecule, which binds to that oxygen and helps transport it around your body to the places where it needs to go, which is effectively everywhere.
It has, the way that manifests, there's a lot of different effects that sort of come as a result of the transport of oxygen.
I think for this discussion, the two that we're gonna focus on specifically are the contribution towards normal cognitive development in children, as as the contribution towards normal cognitive function.
And as it relates to cognitive function and development, according to ESA, there are 4 specific key areas in which, iron is involved, namely attention, memory, verbal fluency, and perceptual motor speed.
So again, lots of different aspects of this.
And the reason that it's so critical is because in children as these processes develop, If there is an iron deficiency present such so early in life, that can have lasting consequences for which there's really very limited remedies for.
So, having adequate iron nutrition, particularly during childhood and of course during pregnancy as.
Again, same logic applies as recholate, is incredibly important for these kids.
One challenge, however, that pregnant women especially face is that when they consume supplemental iron during pregnancy because their needs do go up significantly in the US, One challenge that women do face, during pregnancy, as they supplement with iron, is that it can cause GI side effects, particularly with the higher doses typically attached to prenatal dietary supplements.
What can happen is things like nausea, upset stomach, constipation, diarrhea, etc.
Which, of course, is not what anyone wants.
And of course, during pregnancy where you're already a bit sensitive, generally, This sort of adds fuel to that fire.
So, that is a major contribution to a lack of compliance for IS limitation during pregnancy.
So, what can we do about that?
What other forms can we look at besides ferrous sulfate, which is typically considered the gold standard, with irons like this?
There's something called ferrous bisglycinate, which of course is the form used in our branded product called Ferrique.
And iron chelates specifically and ferrik in particular, have a lot of specific benefits, but we're gonna focus on three in particular.
Number 1 is improved bioavailability, particularly in the presence of anti-nutrients such as phytates, which can interfere with iron absorption, mineral absorption generally, but iron specifically.
Improvements in tolerability, so a lower risk of GI side effects and even from an application standpoint, enhanced solubility, which makes it much more easy and amenable to work with, particularly in beverage applications or sachets like pack type applications.
So rather than go through a series of individual trials, what I'm gonna show you is a recent meta-analysis and systematic review that was published.
And for those of you who are unaware, the simplest way you can explain a meta-analysis is by taking a bunch of individual trials and sort of pooling all that data together to form what is in effect one giant trial.
This is a meta-analysis of 17 different trials, and what they were looking for was two specific questions.
They wanted to see how fer iron ferrous glycinate performed relative to other iron salts, which was a bit of a laundry list, ferrous fumarate, ferrous sulfate, etc.
Etc.
In respect to two specific areas, namely absorption and tolerability.
So what you see when you pull all the data together is that with respect to plasma hemoglobin, which is sort of arguably the king of iron status markers, at least certainly for the long term, is that plasma hemoglobin responses tended to be significantly higher, with ferrous bis glycinate supplementation compared to other iron salts.
So greater efficacy overall in terms of raising iron status.
But I think the most important part, I think, Is the fact that when they looked at the overall prevalence of GI side effects, there's a 64% lower risk of GI adverse events.
Again, nausea, upset stomach, constipation, diarrhea, etc.
So, lots of really great benefits for this, greater, greater efficacy, lower risk of GI side effects.
One thing also to notice is that as it relates particularly to the solubility piece is that it's not just us recognizing this as.
Ferrous glycinate by virtue of that sort of chelated structure really becomes quite soluble.
And in fact, the World Health Organization and their evaluation of iron fortificates.
Noted that ferrous bis glycinate was the suggested iron fortificant of choice for fluid, milk, and soft drink applications.
So, not just us saying this as , something that is recognized by public health authorities around the world.
So lastly, we'll touch on some intake data overall.
You'd think, of course, with all of this really great information about these products and then about these nutrients and what they do and how beneficial they are for both mom and baby, we would make a more concerted effort to get enough in our diets.
Sadly, we simply don't.
And when we look at the dietary intakes of something like choline, for example, choline inadequacy is quite common among kids.
So here, this is a percent of the population consuming above the AI, so higher is better.
But you can see that particularly once kids enter their teen years, the prevalence of inadequacy is quite, quite low.
Just 3% of teens get enough choline in their diet overall.
Among pregnant women, choline intakes around the world tend to be, below the recommended levels of intake.
So you can see not just in the US but across Canada, China, Jamaica, different regions of the world, the intakes of choline among pregnant women tend to be below, the recommendation.
Part of the reason for that is that prenatal multivitamins in particular tend to contain very little choline.
In the US, according to the dietary supplement labeling database, just 14% of multivitamin mineral products which are labeled as prenatals contain any amount of choline.
And when you look at the amount of choline in those products, it tends to be on average.
Below, 20% or sort of excellent source level.
And this is something that, that experts recognize.
And when, when you look at some of the language from the American Medical Association, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, March of Dimes, dietary guidelines, all of these groups recognize both that choline is important and essential, particularly during pregnancy, but also that most prenatal vitamins do not have enough choline in them.
Iron as , iron is famously one of the most common nutrient deficiencies in the world, and the US public health authorities also recognize this as.
Iron inadequacy is recognized by the dietary guidelines, particularly for young children, teen girls, and for women who are pregnant.
And when you look at the prevalence overall of, of iron deficiency in the US, so this is, not just inadequacy, not getting enough in your diet, but also just a, a diagnosable deficiency as, as measured by blood status, nearly 1 in 15 kids, in the US aged under 5 are estimated to have an iron deficiency in the US.
And so to put that into some kind of perspective, this is about just shy of about 1.5 million kids in the US, which is imagine twice the population of Boston itself, so very, very common, exceedingly common in the US sadly, and something that's very preventable.
In Europe as , about 20% roughly of European children are estimated to have anemia, according to the World Health Organization.
And that number increased to about 25% of pregnant women in in Europe are estimated to have anemia, according to the World Health Organization.
So sadly very common.
So, what do we want you to walk away with here?
What's our summary?
Just remember that proper nutrition is very essential for ensuring adequate intake of key nutrients to support cognitive development in children.
And that starts earlier than you think.
Not just with baby and, and child's diet, but also with mom's diet during pregnancy.
Choline is an essential nutrient that supports brain and spinal cord development in particular.
And there are studies that show a lot of benefits to mom consuming enough during pregnancy, specifically improving cognitive function in her, in her child with benefits that last.
You can see benefits as early as infancy in the first year of life, and benefits that last and are still present even at age 7.
Iron as , another essential nutrient that supports cognitive cognitive development, and cognitive function.
Our chelated form ferrousus glycinate, is more bioavailable and less likely to interact with anti-nutrients in the diet.
The latest data, pulling all of the available information, particularly on pregnant women, shows that ferrous bis glycinate supplementation is 64% less likely to result in GI, GI adverse events in pregnant women, which is significant when you consider the compliance, that these women need to have.
Experts recommend getting enough choline and iron during pregnancy and development, to make sure that you're supporting adequate neurological development in your child.
So, with that, I'll turn it over to my colleague Oliver and let him walk you through some product concepts.
Great, thank you very much, Eric.
So before I start, let me start with a question to the audience, and I know we are here in a virtual space and not on stage, but maybe you can ask these questions yourself and find answers for yourself.
So how many of you don't know the iron level of their children, or know if that's in line with the recommendations, and how many of you don't know if their children might lack on choline?
And honestly, I don't know it either for myself, but I should.
So my name is Oliver Riemann.
I'm senior manager of business development at Balham, and I'm responsible for the Albion Minerals brand, and I'm a proud father, a proud father of two young, wonderful girls, 2 and 5 years old, and both are really in the melting pot of brain development, learning new things every day, and As you know, as parents, you literally can watch how they build up new cognitive structures, and obviously as a father, it's my utmost desire that they have the best conditions to do so.
But unfortunately it's a fact that 2 billion people globally are affected by iron deficiency, and that is not just a problem of developing countries, that's a real issue around the globe and also affecting Europe and America as you have seen, and 2 billion, that means that more than every 4th person on average suffers from iron deficiency.
So if you're together with friends or with your family, you literally can count 1234, and it's likely that you will find someone who's lacking on iron, of course, just on average, but that should show you that the topic itself is highly relevant on the one hand, but also highly attractive.
So we already heard why iron deficiency is such a critical and important topic when it comes to supporting our children's cognitive development, but why is the risk so alarming that children don't get enough iron?
And if you have a look at the table here, basically that's because they have different nutritional habits than we adults have, but at the same time their bodies have the same need for iron intake as adults have.
So when you have a look at the table, for example, a 3 year old kid has the same need for iron as a 40 year old adult.
A 5 year old kid has even a higher demand.
And even more critical, as Eric already said, when we have a look at women during pregnancy, their need for iron almost doubles, but normally that doesn't mean that their intake of iron-rich food doubles, so supplementation is even more important to brain development before the children were born.
And I would like to give you an example.
My daughters mainly love noodles, and they love noodles with butter and with cheese, and that's it.
And honestly, they would love to eat it every day, and obviously that is not the best suitable source of bioavailable iron.
So in a nutshell, our kids eat differently.
They eat less food than we do, but they have the same requirements for iron, and that means higher risks for deficiencies.
And of course that alone is the most important reason to give attention to this topic to fight anemia.
However, from a commercial standpoint, I would like to say there are even more reasons I would like to show you, , which, which, which proves that functional food for kids makes totally sense.
And reason number one, as seen in the introduction from Enova, is that the market for child nutrition is growing and especially in segments we talk about today like dairy, like beverages, like cognition things, that's a highly attractive field.
So from a commercial standpoint, it makes sense to be active here.
And you already have heard WHO has recognized this topic as highly relevant and recommends iron bisclys in it, so exactly that product what we call Ferrocal as the preferred source for iron supplementation, especially when it comes to beverages.
Of course when it comes to development of our children, only the best is good enough for parents.
And what does it mean?
There is a big momentum for marketers, which means driving attention to these topics and convincing the parents that it makes sense to take care of supplementation and to give the kids the best conditions for their brain development.
And to do so, iron bisglycinate is the ideal source because iron bisglycinate comes with strong academic research that proves not only the efficiency and the benefits of the ingredient, but this academic research can directly be translated into your marketing claims.
And especially for all the colleagues from the US here on the call, ferrocal and iron bisleen it comes with a broad variety of potential structure function claims.
So that means this source of iron is highly attractive to use.
Of course topics like fighting anemia in kids is very beneficial also for your corporate social responsibility and to prove that last but not least and maybe one of the best reasons to believe in the concept is success stories.
And what you can see here on the right side of the slide is that even a top 3 dairy brand put goals in the latest annual report.
They want to have more than 85% of their kids' dairy products being fortified.
Minerals by 2025 and even more, they want to have at least 5 products to address iron deficiency in children also by 2025, and that shows you that this topic entered the mass market already.
So, how to approach the topic from a commercial standpoint, for example, if you are a marketer or a brand.
And we all know children, especially young ones, are not known for preferring tablets or capsules to supplement nutrients.
So why not feeding them with essential nutrients like iron and vitacholine through things they like to eat and drink anyway.
And what you see here on the slides are dairy products from the market like milk, like yogurt, and those are usually on every children's meal plan every day, and they are already associated with being important for kids' development.
So the buzzwords you probably know are calcium for strong bones and things like that.
So why don't use it and why don't calling it a cognition milk and What you see here in the examples are dairy drinks which provides you a tasty start into a day, but also serves as a good source of contributing to healthy iron levels.
All these products you see here on the slides are formulated with ferrous biscly in it, though here the kids get the highest absorption and best tolerability to ensure the best benefits for them.
So here we come back to our idea of brain milk, of cognition milk, and If you are a brand, maybe here on the call is that one brand which is looking for 5 projects in their annual report.
So then we should talk.
But what you see here on the slide maybe is an idea for that.
That is a regular pack of milk every mother or father takes home from the supermarket.
But this one provides you 10% of the RDI for iron and 20% of the RDI for vitacholine every with every serve every day.
So having this milk in the fridge is already a good portion of nutritional intake for our two hero ingredients and just by your normal routine, having cereals with milk in the morning or having a cup of chocolate milk or milk in the morning, of course that is.
A good source of nutrients and very convenient to take for children.
And again, here for our US colleagues on the call, you can see the benefits on the slide.
Having these ingredients in your products provides you also the opportunity with strong marketing claims.
But as already said, supporting children's brain development goes beyond fortifying their breakfast.
It starts already during pregnancy, where the most critical foundation of brain development happens and where the risk of iron deficiency is the highest, as we've seen on the table.
So of course iron supplementation for pregnant women is not a new topic, but it is highly relevant.
So let's make it convenient.
And that is our second concept.
It delivers iron and vitacholine in an attractive way, and we called, we called it mama rama.
It's dedicated to pregnant women and new moms.
It works the same way as the dairy products for the kids, enjoying a refreshing and tasteful break, fueling your body with essential nutrients, especially during a period of time where your body needs them the most.
And before you claim, OK, prenatal supplements, that's nothing new, prenatal supplement, maybe that is too much of a niche for us, we tested exactly that that concept in real life during consumer testing against an established top 3 nutritional shake brand.
And the results show that Mamma rama scored significantly better, especially regarding uniqueness, being the healthier option and providing essential nutrients for brain development, and obviously that is directly tied to our ingredients vitacholine and ferrocal, which are not part of the reference product from the established brand.
So originally we wanted to create a concept for becoming and for new moms, and at the end of consumer testing, it turned out we created a cognition beverage which has the ability to recognize as the healthier, unique option for cognitive development.
When it comes to buying shakes.
So, same thing, there is a big potential to address the topic of cognition, of iron deficiency, of supply, of providing vitacholine to the body in the field of beverages.
And last but not least, just to show you the complete package when it comes to usual iron supplementation, of course I want to show you how a concept of tablets or capsules could look like.
And so we created this one.
It is formulated according to the needs of a pregnant woman, but from a marketing perspective here we combined it directly with vitacholine, and so it is not positioned as your usual iron supplement.
It is clearly positioned as a format for babies' brain development, so even in the space of traditional supplements, you can.
Position the product in a dedicated certain attractive way by combining ferrocal and vitacholine and addressing it directly to the topic of babies' brain development.
So wrapping up, as you have heard, there are strong arguments on the science side to use iron biscli in it in general and ferrocal in particular when it comes to choosing the right source of iron.
If you want to make sure your consumers can benefit from superior bioavailability and less GI irritation, you need to ensure getting high quality, truly reacted chelated iron, otherwise you don't get what you expect and you can't benefit from these things you have heard in the science part in that presentation.
And with our product Ferrocal we exactly take out this risk from your purchasing process.
So with Ferrocalal we ensure you get exactly what WHO recommends and especially when coming to child nutrition, everybody wants to be on the safe side, and that's what we want to ensure.
So let's join hands with Ferrokal and Vitacoline.
Let's sell, let's create a healthier future by supporting our kids' cognitive development, by fighting iron deficiencies and driving business growth through innovative new product launches.
Thank you very much.
A big thanks to our speakers for their insightful presentations.
Once again, this is William Bradford Nichols from Nutrition Insight, and I'll now host a Q&A session with our experts.
Some great questions have already been submitted, so let's get started.
Our first question is, what is the benefit from vitacholine compared to normal choline?
Eric, would you care to answer?
Sure.
So, you know, I would argue that vitacholine is kind of the standard choline, right?
So, choline, generally speaking, will get broken down as a, it's like choline salt.
So there's gonna be your choline molecule and then whatever it's bound to, right?
Like in our case, a bitartrate or chloride.
So choline will sort of get separated from its partner and then will be absorbed directly.
So most water-soluble vitamins, and, and similar compounds, choline included.
Don't really suffer from a lot of challenges from absorption, fortunately.
So choline is very absorbed.
Really, the difference between, vitacholine and, and other choline-type products on the market is going to be who it's partnered with.
But generally speaking, the amount of choline that gets into the body and into the brain, which is often where you see the discussion going, is, according to the Institute of Medicine, directly proportional to the amount of Chole that is present in the, and most choline forms do increase the amount of choline available in the blood to a similar degree.
So, for us, you know, I think the, the real difference for vitacholine as a brand is our investment, I would argue as the science guy, I would argue that, the investment into the science is really what makes us special and unique.
A lot of the studies that we showed and then plenty more which we haven't, I'd love to share at some point in the future.
All use our material.
We invest a lot into science, specifically, we've got a lot of tools available to help you as brand owners and of course consumers as.
So that would certainly be the difference between us and, other cool things on the market for sure.
Great.
Thank you for answering that.
Sticking, sticking with the, vitacoline for a second, one of our audience members would like to know if vitacholine is only relevant for children and pregnant women, or are there further cases, a further use around brain health and cognitive function at later stages in life.
Oh, for sure.
That's a great question.
Very common question too.
There's been a lot of new data in the last, let's say 2 years or so around choline during pregnancy, which is why we focus on it so much.
We're really excited about it.
But that said, choline is an essential nutrient throughout life, right?
It's essential for everyone from infants to seniors and everyone in between, right?
So it really plays, you can, you can divide out Cole's job into two big camps.
Number one is brain health, which of course we talked about.
And there's lots of really great data in addition, to the stuff on, on prenatal and early life nutrition.
Also in adults too, we've got some really cool data showing, the absorption of choline b tartrate into the brain as.
And we've also got our Really cool clinical which shows that choline supplementation actually improved performance on an e-gaming test.
So think of like a point and click test.
Really cool information on that.
The other big bucket of benefits outside of brain health is gonna be in liver health.
Choline, the reason it's essential and the reason it was defined as essential was because of its ability to move fats from the liver on elsewhere into the body.
And that's actually what is, the basis for the requirement from the Institute of Medicine.
So, really important role in maintaining liver health, metabolic health overall.
So, lots of really great data that's not just limited to, children and expecting women.
So, super important nutrient essential throughout life.
All right, thank you for that.
Very informative as.
We have a question about phytates.
Phytates were mentioned as an issue for mineral absorption.
How significant of a concern is that for iron or other minerals?
Yeah, really great question.
So, phytates, in case you're not aware, are what we would term an anti-nutrient food.
So phytate is a complex molecule of phosphorus, which can affect normal absorption, and it tends to interfere with what we call the big four.
So, namely, iron, calcium, magnesium, and zinc in particular.
So, for iron, for example, phytates, the, the impact can be quite significant.
So, even just as little as about 10 mg of phytates in your diet can actually decrease iron absorption by nearly 60%.
This is something that's very recognized by, the Institute of Medicine, by EFSA.
By the World Health Organization and others.
In fact, even some nutrient recommendations, I think for zinc, for example, in, in the European Union from EFSA are actually stratified by the amount of phytate intake.
And just to put it in perspective too, I know I said 10 mg can decrease iron absorption rather significantly.
Just to put that in perspective.
The average intake for most people sits around 1 g a day or 1000 mg.
So 10 mg is not a ton.
So it can be, a significant concern.
And generally, too, we have to remember that when we're consuming nutrients, we don't do them like one at a time, generally, right?
We're not just consuming iron and then zinc, and then vitamin D and choline and what have you.
We eat foods that have lots of different things in them, lots of different nutrients, lots of different anti-nutrients.
So, that is a rather significant concern, especially if you're someone for iron, for example.
If you're someone who's on a plant-based diet, you're a vegetarian, or vegan, what have you.
Anti-nutrients like phytates tend to be focused in plant-based foods, particularly.
So for iron, it's a bit of a double whammy in a sense because, A, plant-based foods tend not to have a lot of what's called heme iron, which is the better absorbed form.
And B, the presence of phytates tends to be a little higher, so it can reduce overall the amount of iron that you get in your body.
So that does place, some vegetarians at risk of, a higher risk of inadequacy or perhaps anemia.
So, great question.
All right.
Thank you.
One of our audience members, is asking, they know that studies have been done on children in Europe and the US.
They're wondering if any studies have been done on children in maybe Africa or other places, or do you know if any are planned?
Yeah, good question.
So, it depends on what you're defining as the studies.
So most of the intervention studies were done on folks for cooling, in the US for example, for, ferrik, for iron, it sort of does run the gamut.
With respect to the dietary intake data and some of the, the data I showed about, the geographic prevalence of anemia, for example, those data come from the World Health Organization, and they do have that catalog for all the, all of the different WHO regions which does include Africa.
The links are on the slides, or at the very least the citations are.
And if not, if you still need help from those data, I'm happy to provide them.
Absolutely.
Just send me an email, just reach out anytime, and I'm happy to help, for sure.
Right.
And you definitely sort of answered this one already, but someone's wondering how hard is it to actually attain needed iron and choline from just natural dietary sources.
Oh yeah, for sure, great question.
You know, I think the fact that you see the prevalence of inadequacy so high sort of speaks to that.
Choline is a little bit of a simpler story.
The, the simple fact of the matter is that virtually nobody gets enough.
I think the, the statistic overall in the United States is about 90% of Americans don't get enough, choline in their diet.
Similar numbers roughly in Europe and elsewhere as.
The main sources for that tend to be, eggs, meat, you know, beef, beef liver is sort of the, the classical, you know, high source of choline, which is not something that a lot of people eat.
It's really challenging.
The other challenge with choline too is that those tend to be very calorically dense foods.
So if you're someone who's struggling to, to maintain or, or limit your calories to whatever reason to a healthy amount, that can be really challenging to get enough coin in your diet.
So even the USDA, for example, has what they call healthy eating patterns.
And within many of those, within the sort of calorie limits, there's really no opportunity to get 100% of the requirement of choline.
For iron, The groups that tend to be at the biggest risk of inadequacy tend to be, as we mentioned in the talk, expecting moms, women of childbearing age, and young children.
Reason being, as Oliver alluded to as , the requirements tend to be fairly high, and again, you're sort of limited in the amount of calories that you can or should consume.
So that creates sort of a recipe for inadequacy.
It just, it's a bit of a real estate problem, right?
You've got somehow cram in all of this, iron and choline, within sort of a calorically limited diet.
Diet.
So, it can be really challenging and you do see that reflected in the data, like the prevalence of inadequacy and, and deficiency and, and some of those key specific groups as.
So, yeah, really great question.
All right.
Thank you so much, Eric and Oliver, for speaking with us today and for sharing your wonderful insights.
Unfortunately, that's all the time we have time for today.
I'd like to thank today's speakers for sharing their insights and offer a big thank you to all of our viewers around the world for joining us today.
Don't forget that you can ask questions and emails after if we didn't get to you.
And that is it for us.
Goodbye for now.
