“Healing with food, not medicine”: Are new consumers entering sports nutrition more discerning?

24 Feb 2020 --- Sports nutrition is barreling toward the mainstream with its appeal reaching athletes, fitness enthusiasts, “weekend warriors” and active consumers who now seek health and wellness through food and beverages, just as much as supplements and sports-specific nutrition. Protein remains a key ingredient, while the F&B industry is also getting creative with applications that satiate consumer demand for performance-boosting healthy indulgence, with a holistic positioning. Interest in how athletes and others can thrive without consuming animal-derived foods has piqued, while clean label ingredients continue to take center stage within the sports nutrition sector.

According to Elisa Glover, Nutrition Specialist at Volac, NPD in sports nutrition in 2020 will continue to show strong growth. “The new consumers entering this category are more discerning, therefore manufacturers and brands need to provide products that meet their expectations of quality, effectiveness and taste,” she tells FoodIngredientsFirst. 

“New formats for delivering protein are likely to be popular with consumers, especially applications that deliver unique benefits such as low sugar or sugar free propositions,” Glover notes. 

Personalizing sports nutrition
For Sarah O’Neill Marketing Manager for Nutrition at Carbery, consumers are taking a “holistic approach to their overall health,” and this includes focusing on a wide range of health needs from digestive, to cognitive health. 

“Focusing specifically on cognitive health, in the UK, 34 percent of consumers are interested in drinks that support brain function,” she affirms. 

Performance nutrition products currently being launched offer a wide range of benefits ranging from reduced tiredness and fatigue to improved concentration and mental focus. Key traditional ingredients supporting these claims include caffeine, taurine, L-theanine, beta alanine and B vitamins. We have also seen the use of herbal extracts such as Ginkgo biloba in this space,” adds O’Neill. 

For Tara Bane, Marketing Manager EMEA at Glanbia, personalization in sports nutrition means taking traditional key aspects and supplementing them to fill in more niche benefit gaps. “For example, a pre-workout product supplemented with collagen for joint health, while also delivering the collagen that many lifestyle consumers seek,” she says. 

The sports segment has evolved tremendously in the past decade with an ever-expanding consumer base. Historically, sports nutrition was limited to hard core gym goers and athletes. According to Bane, this has expanded considerably and now includes consumers with varied health and performance goals. “By giving consumers what they want and how they want it means that they are able to customize their product mix to their lifestyle,” Bane continues. “Many consumers are not only experimenting with new flavors and ingredients but with specific, generally restrictive diets from veganism to keto. Consequently, this category is full of new product innovation.” 

Bane also highlights that consumers are looking to improve their lives with the mantra “heal me with food, not medicine.” 

Consumers are looking to improve their lives with the mantra “heal me with food, not medicine.” In this spirit, Mathieu Lucot, Marketing Manager at Epi Ingredients, believes that consumers are increasingly seeking health and wellness through food. “They aspire to eat healthy and feed their body exactly what it needs, moving away from the one-size-fits-all protein ‘craze’ and towards a more individualized approach, tailored to their own specific needs. 

As protein fortification stays strong, we are also witnessing the rise of new trends such as the use of probiotics or nootropics to positively affect performance and recovery, which definitely resonates with health-conscious and active consumers, he further explains.

“There is a clear pull towards alternative proteins; a trend that definitely challenges suppliers of more “traditional” proteins like us to think outside the box and innovate with formats and new ways to consume protein,” Lucot notes. 

Meanwhile, Angus Rowland, Fonterra Sales Manager for Active Nutrition in Europe, says that added benefits beyond protein will become an expectation for new sports nutrition products in the market in 2020, highlighting that this could be “as simple as lactose free, added vitamins and minerals, or more advanced benefits such as cognition or gut health.”

Consumers are now looking for more than just a “high in protein” claim and ingredients such as pre/probiotics are an example of how brands can differentiate, Rowland says. Additionally, consumers are becoming more aware of how their products impact their individual health and the environment. “Personalization, gut health, cognition and sustainability are all front of mind for consumers and are leading trends in Europe and the UK,” he notes. 

Collagen ramping up the protein stakes 
“The introduction of plant proteins and collagen has encouraged new consumers to try and buy new products that have expanded the category. The blending of offerings for the active lifestyle user and the hard core user has been mutually beneficial,” Bane from Glanbia explains. 

For Yingying Wu, Global Product Manager Collagen Peptides at PB Leiner, encompassing more and more women to traditionally male-dominated space, will inevitably have an impact on the product development as a whole – from formulations (choice of “female-friendly” ingredients, flavors) to packaging and marketing positioning. 

“We see this market as a great opportunity for collagen as it offers an array of health benefits for active females who focus much more on weight management and holistic health and less on growing muscles. Collagen is a well-known ingredient for ‘beauty from within’ market; moreover, it supports bone and joint health and contributes to weight management due to its superior satiety effect compared to other proteins,” Wu explains. The challenges, however, are to educate consumers about these benefits collagen brings for sports so that it can be recognized as a sports nutrition ingredient. 

“We have seen some of the strong consumer brands started to set these market trends of “collagen for sports” by new product development,” she adds. Collagen, as a pure protein with an array of clinically proven benefits in the domain of sports nutrition has a great opportunity in this space, according to Wu. 

Healthy indulgence in performance nutrition
Another interesting trend that Wu sees emerging in sports nutrition is indulgence. Consumers want to break out from chocolate and vanilla flavors typical in sports nutrition products and seek healthy products resembling deserts, bakery and confectionery, with richer flavors and textures,” she notes. 

The emergence of indulgence in sports nutrition is linked to the trend that the increasing number of active consumers follow high- protein and low-carb diets which can be very restrictive and having tastier, more indulgent protein snacks to compensate for “carb-cravings” is a great compromise for these consumers, according to Wu. “In the same way, new product formats are appearing: cold pressed bars, dissolvable pouches, diet gels and hybrid proteins in easy to consume formats in line with consumers’ busy lifestyles,” she adds. 

New formats in sports nutritionHigh-protein dairy products such as protein-enriched yogurts and RTD beverages are now popular.
According to Lucot at Epi Ingredients, consumers are “growing tired of the traditional protein shake or unpalatable protein bar.” High-protein dairy products such as protein-enriched yogurts and RTD beverages are now popular and a well-established alternative but protein-enriched dairy needs innovative new formats that will fit in healthy snacking, indulgent dessert and shelf-stable add-ons, he comments. 

For Klaus Brockhausen, Sales Director at Dr. Paul Lohmann, product development areas are convenient consumption forms – RTD beverages, gels or bars which are easy to consume for snacking occasions. “From our focus on minerals we see growing efforts to work on increased bioavailability of the key-nutrients – the right choice of the mineral source is important. There is a very high interest in good-taste and good-performing ingredients,” he explains. 

“There is a rising interest in convenient formats. This request often occurs for raw material grades,” continues Brockhausen. The ingredient should fit the final application from technological, rheological or sensory side. Therefore, we have an ongoing focus in our product development to offer good flowable or tablettable granular forms of minerals, or very fine or even micronized particles.”

Dr. Paul Lohman has also developed iron salt products with a rapeseed oil coating as an alternative to palm oil, which are intended to extend the company’s range of microencapsulated minerals. “For protein-bread and similar products, we also offer a Sports and Energy Mineral Premix, which covers the needed minerals for athletes,” Brockhausen adds. 

What’s next?
For Rowland of Fonterra, gut-health and cognition are some of the fastest growing and most important trends in sport nutrition, and the dairy targeted our new ingredient development and research in this area.

According to O’Neill of Carbery, vitamins and mineral supplements are currently paving the way in personalized nutrition, and sports nutrition will soon follow suit. “More than ever, today’s athlete has a heightened awareness as to how their dietary intake can positively impact on training, recovery and performance,” she explains. “Personalized protein powders are the likely entry point for the mass market with more premium offerings to target this growing segment.”

“We also expect to see additional herb and plant extracts from alternative medicine systems such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine emerging,” she adds. 

One of the key trends to watch out for in sports nutrition is the rise of the conscious consumer. “In order to appeal to this consumer base, it will be key for brands to tell their story in a transparent manner as it relates to the ingredient and product origin, how they were produced, and how the product is packaged,” O’Neill concludes. 

By Elizabeth Green