Healthy living & lifestyle Functional ingredient trends of the moment
Healthier chocolate Luker Chocolate observed a significant shift in consumer demand towards products that provide indulgence but also offer health benefits. In response, it developed a range of functional chocolate products, including its 44% Dark Chocolate with Protein, which is plant-based, gluten-free and non-GMO. This product, formulated with pea protein, provides 5g of protein per 25g serving.
Plant-based seasonings
Alon Chen, CEO and co-founder of TasteWise, has noticed that consumers are often interested in making small changes to their diets with maximum impact. Examples he points to include plant-based seasonings and flavorings with health benefits like black lime, catechin, Celtic sea salt and others.
Alternative indulgences Tastewise has also found that consumers want ways to be indulgent, without the health impact. In the company’s 2024 trend report, it predicted a rise in cottage cheese as a late-night alternative to more indulgent desserts and, looking forward, it expects to see a continued rise in Greek yoghurt and other fermented dairies.
Mushrooms Mushrooms, particularly varieties like reishi, lion’s mane and chaga, are gaining popularity in the functional food space due to their adaptogenic properties, which help the body manage stress. As consumers increasingly seek natural solutions for mental clarity, energy and resilience, adaptogens like mushrooms are beginning to feature in everything from coffee blends to nutritional supplements.
“It started off with immunity, but as the panic decreased around the immediate infection risk, it started to move towards how to maintain a healthy state for as long as possible. Consumers also started paying more attention to the nuances of functional ingredients, for example, the knock-on impacts improving your gut health can have on cardiovascular and brain health.” Alon Chen, CEO and co-founder of Tastewise, a generative AI platform that helps food brands predict and respond to the latest trends, has also noticed exponential growth in consumers’ focus on holistic health and healthy eating. “We’ve seen interest in aspects like ‘immune system support’ rising over 150% year-on-year in social media discussion, and trends like hydration, energy and heart health seeing over 50% increase in interest across restaurant menus and social discussions in the last year,” he says. “In the wake of the pandemic, a lot of us re-evaluated our relationship with our health and our approach to it. That, combined with the ever-growing wealth of knowledge becoming more accessible on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram has led to consumers understanding the importance of a holistic approach to health. As a result, they’re seeking new ways to improve their health through their food choices – and they are doing it from a place of sophistication and specificity.”
Weight management and gut health At Tate & Lyle, this has translated into two key areas of focus: functional ingredients for weight management and gut health.
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“On the weight management front, we have a large portfolio of sweeteners, from stevia to monk fruit to sucralose and allulose, and our nutrition team works on research, including their safety and efficacy in different age groups and the very nuanced differences between them when it comes to managing blood glucose response and how they act when combined with other carbohydrates like sugar,” Karnik explains. The field of digestive health has also become much more nuanced in recent years. “We’ve moved on from just talking about fibres. Now consumers understand different types of fibres. They understand not just probiotics and prebiotics but also post-biotics. They are also starting to understand more about what makes a healthy microbiota and how it impacts our health more broadly,” Karnik says. “Gut health is one umbrella we work under, but it’s much broader than digestive health. We look at gut health leading to brain health, to metabolic health, to cardiovascular health. Any improvement in gut health is not just about tackling regularity or constipation – we have gone way beyond that. Our research team is also exploring the synergistic effects of different fibres.”
Taste: the ultimate driver Functionality alone, however, is far from enough to get a functional ingredient into a product, onto the shelves and into consumers’ homes. “Taste must always be the ultimate driver,” Karnik stresses. “Ask any dietitian and they’ll tell you that if it doesn’t taste good, compliance will drop.” For this reason, it’s important for nutrition, regulatory, applications and R&D teams to work closely together to ensure that functional products not only offer the health benefits consumers are increasingly demanding, but are also compliant with regulations, and, above all, tasty. “Our applications teams are both scientists and artists,” Karnik stresses. Say you were creating a healthier version of a confectionery. It’s not just a case of removing sugar and replacing it with a sweetener. Sucralose, for example, is 600 times sweeter than sugar, so you can’t simply remove 20g of sugar and replace it with less than a gram of sucralose. What happens to the remaining 19g? “Sugar does more than just sweetening; it affects browning, preservation, texture and freezing points, especially in products like ice cream. When reducing sugar, all these factors need to be carefully balanced,” Karnik explains. “Consumers need to understand that it’s a complex science, not just a matter of swapping in a sweetener. And ultimately, it still has to taste good.” Other factors to take into account include cost, shelf life, texture and mouthfeel. “Sweeteners are more expensive than sugar in certain applications. On top of that, customers often come to us with
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