At Vitafoods Europe 2018, FoodBev’s Alex Clere spoke with Timothee Olagne – nutraceutical category marketing VP for Naturex – about the company’s range of health-promoting ingredients.
In particular, Naturex has focused on heart health and healthy ageing, given how widespread cardiovascular disease currently is. “If you look at the number-one killer in the world,” Olagne explained, “it’s linked to cardiovascular disease. Approximately one-third of the global population has issues either on their cholesterol – too high cholesterol – or on blood pressure. So it’s very predominant, and this issue is global; it’s not specific to Europe.”
Naturex was proudly demonstrating two ingredient concepts that help address the need for products aimed at heart health: a heart-healthy instant drink combining oat bran with natural flavours, either pineapple and passionfruit or red fruits and ginger. The instant drinks deliver a thicker texture than many water-soluble beverages thanks to the oat content, while each serving contains 3g of cholesterol-lowering oat beta-glucan.
This is what modern consumers are looking for: healthy products that they can use to supplement their regular dietary patterns, but that deliver key benefits in areas such as immune health, joint health, or cardiovascular health.
Olagne continues: “What [consumers] want to see is something relatable, at least on the healthy ingredients. I would say 10, 15 years back the idea of healthy means bad-tasting: if it tastes bad, it’s great for health. I think they don’t accept that. At the same time, there has been an evolution where they are ready to accept something which is less flavoured, with less sugars, and that’s why we can bring components like purée, going more to the smoothie type of drinks, where we say it’s the whole – you bring the whole fruit and you boost it with functional ingredients.”
And Olagne gave a glimpse into the future in terms of what comes next for the France-based company: “Our motto is to bring traceable and clean ingredients, so the big [upcoming trend for Naturex] is really working on digestion. For example, with ginger, people are used to this ginger kick – there’s a perception of health as well. So working to bring some ginger extract that are interesting for flavour but especially with health benefit components.”
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