Supplements & functional ingredients Scaling new F
or most people thinking of taking a supplement, Vitamin K2 would not be top of the list. Unlike better established supplements, Vitamin D for instance, there is scant public knowledge about why K2 is necessary – or indeed what it can do. There are no standardised indicators that can tell you whether someone is deficient, nor are there any clear recommendations around how much you should consume each day.
That said, many researchers are convinced it’s only a matter of time before K2 becomes better known. After all, it appears to play a critical role in blood clotting, bone health, and heart health, through regulating the way that calcium is used in the body.
Overlooked for decades, Vitamin K2 could soon soar as high as its mountain namesake. The vitamin holds promise for bone health, heart health, and more – but since it is hard to obtain from dietary sources, there is a largely untapped market for supplementation. Naturopathic doctor and author Dr Kate Rhéaume; Piotr Jandziak, general manager at Pharmaquinone; and Dr Tao Zhang, a researcher at Technological University Dublin, tell Abi Millar why K2 is poised to become better known.
Strikingly, it’s also very hard to get enough of the vitamin through dietary sources alone. This means K2 could soon become a rising star of the nutraceuticals market. The market research firm Mintel noticed this trend as early as 2013, reporting that product launches containing Vitamin K2 had almost doubled over the past five years. Around the same time, Innova Market Insights described Vitamin K2 as ‘the next big thing’. Since then, sales have increased rapidly. A report by DataHorizzon Research suggests the market will surge from $549m in 2022 to $1.154bn a decade later.
“When I first came across research about Vitamin K2, I was surprised to learn there was a nutrient with
wellness highs 1:9
The ratio of Vitamin K2 to Vitamin K1in a typical Western diet.
National Library of Medicine
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
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