Trends in the functional foods market
17 Jun 2019 | Informa
At Vitafoods Europe 2019, NutritionInsight spoke with Marion Schumacher, Content Manager at Informa, about the key trends in the current funtional foods market. Schumacher highlights the importance of transparency and trust, and the role storytelling and technology can play therein.
This is Rob Wires at Vita Foods Europe in Geneva and I'm here with Marian Schumacher, who is the content manager, content manager at the Informat, the organizers of the show.
Marion, what are some of the key themes that you've seen here at this year's event and what have been kind of the big discussion points within the education program?
Yeah, so the education program this year has been focusing a lot around sustainability.
It really touches every area of, of the product.
It really starts with sourcing the ingredient, then goes.
All the way through the supply chain where we have a lot of impact from technology at the moment, so things like blockchain are starting to impact the industry and we can see that companies are looking to implement that in the next few years, and then it really goes from the sourcing right to the consumer.
So we've also been talking about how do you communicate your efforts to the consumer, how do you bring them on board, and how do you then also ensure their loyalty.
Through really communicating these values, communicating that your brand is transparent, that it cares about sustainability, and because a lot of we find that a lot of consumers really care about these points and so it is a real benefit if you know as a company how to communicate these efforts to your consumers.
What are some examples of how you might do that?
What, what are some of the insights that you've gleaned from as a result?
Yes, a lot of things I think.
Back to to storytelling, and how you implement that storytelling in your packaging, but as I mentioned before, we we're bringing in technology into that space as.
So we've seen with quite a few US brands that are that they are looking to incorporate codes on the back of their packaging where you can actually scan them in and then through blockchain trace back where your product actually comes from.
So they are making it very easy for the consumers to track where their product.
Comes from and highlight that they are sustainable brands.
And I think that through that way, like, first of all, highlighting and and enabling transparency and then also communicating it through different channels of storytelling.
Do you think, do you think there's something unique about the nutraceutical sector when it comes to this kind of sustainability marketing or do you think that it's something that's kind of prevalent across the board?
Yeah, I think the natural products industry is is almost on the forefront of that simply because of the the consumer market that it tries to target.
So we are looking, we're looking for people or the consumers are naturally people who do care about health, who then also care about where do our products come from.
It's not your usual.
Consumer of let's say fast food products, these people are people who care about their own health, but then also, the health of the planet and also with millennials having more and more buying power, that comes in quite strongly.
What can you say about some of the themes that have been really discussed here at the conference?
What what has proved to be particularly popular and and where do you see kind of innovation taking place?
A very popular area that it has been popular over the past years, but it's a very popular is digestive health.
So that has been a, a very active session that has just taken place in the digestive, Health Forum over at the Congress Centre, and, we see that trends like fermentation, are very popular, so we know fermentation.
Is a is a lot more, prevalent in Asia at the moment with kimchi, for example, in Korea, but that's really coming over to Europe with, for example, kombucha drinks becoming more and more popular and, and us seeing those on the shelves, not only at Whole Foods, but also a lot of pubs, for example, in the UK start stocking, kombucha, and that's, that's something that will just, it has taken off but we will see it.
More and more, so fermentation is certainly a trend that we're seeing in digestive health, and non-digestible sugars, as.
So we're not just having, the usual probiotics, but I think the market is, is expanding into other areas of digesting health and digestive health, and I think we're just really scratching at the surface of what digestive health really means and how it impacts our overall health, our brain health.
Overall wellness and and skin health as.
Indeed.
And you mentioned that brain health.
I guess that's another very trending platform.
Other ones that you might isolate and say that's that's really something that's been particularly strong and something that you've really seen this year on the show floor.
Yeah, I think I think you just mentioned brain health.
I think mental wellness is a very popular topic at the moment and we all know that the numbers of people who are taking antidepressants.
Is is very concerning.
I think most of us have seen the figures from the US and and that doesn't look great, and I think more and more people are looking for a more holistic approach towards mental health and stress management and sleeplessness and all these modern day illnesses that we see.
So it's really good to see that a lot of the sessions we have been focusing around what ingredients can we add to our foods, what functional ingredients.
Can we add to help these people claim their lives back and find a better solution with ingredients that have less side effects than the normal pharmaceutical products.
So we had a session yesterday that was focusing entirely around formulating with ingredients for mental wellness, and that was a very promising session I have to say.
Finally, what do you think about the outlook for the nutraceutical sector as a whole?
Are we in a good place?
I think we're in a really good place.
The place is growing very quickly.
It's growing really in, in all areas from like from digestive health that I've mentioned onto nutricosmetics.
It's, I would say it's growing in in all areas and that's very promising.
One thing I'm really looking forward to is the personalized nutrition space.
We'll have to see what impact technology will have and how that will interact with with what we eat and how we can get better advice on what we should be eating.
So I think the personalized nutrition space is a very interesting one to follow.
It's not hit the mass market yet, but I'm hopeful that that will happen in the next 3 to 5 years.
Undoubtedly a platform to watch.
Thank you very much, Maria.
Thank you.
