At Vitafoods Europe 2018, Diana Food’s global category manager for consumer health, Stephanie Pretesacque, spoke to FoodBev about the rise in food-like formats such as confectionery and chocolate for dietary supplements.
As Pretesacque told FoodBev’s Alex Clere, the company offers a range of different delivery forms for its health ingredients – including capsules and soft gels – but it’s in these ‘food-like’ applications where growth is strongest.
Affordability, accessibility and ease of consumption were therefore very important, she said.
Pretesacque said: “What we see more and more is that our customers are looking for products that can be used in food-like types of applications, so that’s why [at Vitafoods Europe] we are exhibiting gummies, we are exhibiting chocolate – but our products can also be used in beverages, they can be used in confectionery products, they can be used in snacks and in cereals.”
She emphasised that Diana Food’s strength lies in its high level of trust – trust in its expertise in raw materials, and trust that its products will deliver for Diana’s customers. That’s why the business places a high level of importance on efficacy, as Pretesacque also explained.
“It’s something we pay a lot of attention to at Diana, because working with natural products we have to consider the amount that is naturally present in the fruit or the vegetable that we are processing. It’s something that we really discuss with our customers. For some products, it’s going to be very easy, because the natural product is sufficiently concentrated to be used in the different formats. In some cases, we will have to discuss what will be the best format that will be able to absorb the right amount of the fruit powder or the vegetable powder that’s needed to bring the right amount of the active component.”
Diana Food has recently announced a five-year research programme to investigate the connection between polyphenols and gut microbiota.
“Polyphenols are a very important family of active components,” Pretesacque explained, “but it is very interesting to note that only 5% of the polyphenols we absorb are actually metabolised by the body, so there is something happening inside our digestive tract that will potentialise the polyphenols and enable them to deliver these benefits.
“We know this is thanks to the catabolism by the microbiota that polyphenols will deliver the health benefits, so this research chair is really going to be investigating these mechanisms of action – but also it will look at combining polyphenols with probiotics to deliver new benefits and optimised benefits for polyphenols and probiotics.”
Presented and edited by: Alex Clere
For more content like this, including further coverage of Vitafoods Europe 2018, check out our Vitafoods topic homepage or follow FoodBev on YouTube.
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024