Addressing the Healthy Aging Market
04 Dec 2012 | Innova Market Insights
Ten emerging trends that will impact new product activity in 2013 and beyond have been identified by Innova Market Insights from its ongoing analysis of global developments. Successful previous predictions from Innova Market Insights in its annual Top Trends series have included the emergence of interest in naturalness and sustainability as long ago as 2008 and the return to softer claims for 2011. The market researcher has tipped "Gray But Healthy" to be a key trend in 2013, as the industry looks to address the needs of the aging global population.
This is Rob Wires at the HIA in Frankfurt.
I'm here with Luanne Williams from Open Market Insights.
Luanne, what are some of the trends that you've seen here at the show and what's really stood out?
What do you think is going to be the future of health ingredients?
I think one thing that I was kind of surprised about was participating in the awards yesterday.
How many of the ingredients were very natural.
So even though we're talking about functional benefits and benefits for consumers, there was a lot of emphasis on ingredients that were either derived from a whole food or from something.
Very natural, so I thought that really stood out that companies are getting more creative in the types of ingredients that they're developing.
I thought also healthy aging is certainly a topic that is here to stay.
Two of the three, ingredients that I really focused on in a presentation today were collagen ingredients.
They were nominated for the award, a natural ingredient that was also used for cellulite, so that's something that a lot of women also my age are very interested in.
But I think even I'm standing in the new product zone and just looking at the ingredients here again.
Looking at how natural some of these are, krill oil, for heart health and brain health, there's another functional oil.
There's a couple of products for sodium reduction.
So again, I think also a lot of focus on healthy aging.
It's a very broad topic and it's difficult to know exactly how do you, pick an area to play in, but certainly you can see that things are evolving that way.
Some new proteins, that can be used to create maybe new drip feeds or.
So high protein beverages for an older consumer.
So again, I think we're starting to see some divisions in some directions in the healthy aging space.
So that's certainly a topic that I'm very interested in.
There's been a very lack of product development within this within this space.
You speak quite a bit about undiscovered marketing opportunities.
What, what, what might be a good idea for a food product developer?
Focus on the benefit and focus on why that benefit is relevant to a consumer and be creative about it and think about what is that consumer need and.
There's certainly, I think, a lot of opportunities.
I think everyone's been complaining about the regulations for so long, but you, we now know what the rules are, so it's very clear.
So now look for the opportunities within that and focus on the benefit because consumers are all, all about the benefit and not about the ingredient.
I think most consumers don't understand what ingredients are necessarily in their product, but they certainly can't understand the benefit, in that.
Because you've highlighted here quite a few applications, perhaps of vitamin C with an immunity claim, novel approaches like this.
Do you think that that's the way forward?
We now know what the rules are, so I think that's very clear.
So I think we can all stop complaining about what's happened, not that the process has been perfect and not that it's still not perfect, and there's a lot of things to be done, but at least we know.
The regulations are straightforward.
We know what we have to work with and then just look for opportunities in that.
Today I gave a talk about weight management opportunities, and we know that for example Konjac is is approved for weight management, but it's not used.
I can only find 30 examples of products that had a weight management positioning with Konjac.
Included in them and someone said, it swells up and maybe it chokes you.
Look for other opportunities.
Maybe you can use it in snacks or you can use it in some other type of application where there's not that kind of hazard.
So I think it's just about being creative and focusing on the benefit for the consumer.
That's the key to everything in healthy product development.
Thank you very much.
