Vitafoods Europe 2024: Arla Foods Ingredients combines hydration with nutritional benefits
24 May 2024 | Arla Foods Ingredients
At Vitafoods Europe 2024, Troels Nørgaard Laursen, director of Health & Performance at Arla Foods Ingredients, highlighted the growing importance of taste and innovative, convenient formats for successful active and lifestyle nutrition products. The company highlighted examples of “holistic hydration,” such as a clear protein drink that caters to consumer demand for functional beverages.
This is Yolande van Gal from Nutrition Insights.
I'm here at Vita Foods Europe 2024 at Arla Foods Ingredients with tools.
Thank you for joining us today.
Can you tell us what market trends have you noticed and what products that are Foods ingredients offered that address those trends?
I think we we are noticing a trend where the consumers of of nutrition products, sports nutrition products are are changing.
We are seeing more active nutrition and lifestyle consumers consuming these products, which opens an opportunity for companies to cater products more specifically to those consumer groups and figuring out what are the key characteristics of products these consumers are looking for because it might be other things than effect of going to the.
Gym 3 to 4 times a week and one of our observations is definitely the importance of taste and having really good taste that is comparable with any other food product and it's also innovation in formats.
It is having something that is convenient to consume as a healthy alternative to other food products.
What we see in the dialogue with our customers is that a lot of the brands are already discovering this, and what we are trying to do is to support them in bringing novel products out that caters to this.
And can you highlight a bit or explain what is driving innovation at Ola Foods ingredients?
I think the the the trend we see with this consumer development has meant that for for several years, the, the focus on, The focus has for a long time been on on nutrition and the effect because a lot of people are taking nutritious products for an effect, but there's definitely been an increased focus on taste.
The products have to be really, really tasty because if consumers have to come back to a nutrition product, it will have to be tasty and then convenience.
That's the three things and novel formats.
These are the areas that have been examples of driving innovation for us.
OK, and I know this year the theme at Arla Foods Greed is holistic hydration, and you have lots of products here to show.
What kind of examples can you show us?
We are showcasing.
Three examples under our holistic hydration concept where we have some clear protein drinks and where we cater to this more functional protein water, we see that from our surveys that 2 out of 3 consumers are looking for functional drinks with added components in them.
And they also want the things combined so they don't have to take a lot of different things.
So we are showing a concept with a clear protein water where you cannot taste the protein.
You don't have any dryness, and you, you have a neutral product where you can work with a new type of flavors compared to the other clear drinks we have in the market today.
So we're going a little bit more, the botanical flavors, spa feeling with hibiscus and white peach with lemongrass and other flavors like this, and then we are showing that you can combine these concepts so you can have the protein in.
And then you can add, for example, caffeine from fresh coffee berries into the product and still have a really good taste in the product, so you get both the energy and the protein.
We have another example where we have added zinc in, so you have health claims on cognition or immune system to go along with your protein.
OK, great.
And can you also highlight some of the research, the latest research has been done on the health benefits of your offerings and what the findings were?
Yeah, we're also presenting a concept about glucose control here where we are, where we've developed a product that we have tested in clinical trials with type 2 diabetic patients, and they struggle with balancing blood sugar and keeping it in the healthy range over a day.
It will typically drop if you exercise, it will drop before a meal.
And perhaps it will peak too high after a meal.
So the concept we've been testing is a mix of functional whey proteins that you can have in a shot before a meal.
So 10,150.
Minutes before a meal, the test subjects have digested this protein shot before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner, and the short story about the publications is that the subjects receiving this pre-meal shot compared to the placebo experience 2 hours more during the day in the healthy range of blood sugar.
So this is an example of a natural nutritional intervention as an alternative to a pharmaceutical drug.
Awesome, great to hear.
And I'm always interested in what's next for the foods ingredients.
What can you tell us?
Are you excited about what will come in the next few years?
And I think the trends I mentioned before on taste, convenience, new formats is something we believe.
Is here to stay, so focusing on bringing a lot of nutrition in very compact formats is definitely a focus for us and also Developing ingredients that can actually bring even more nutrition in smaller doses.
It can also be moving protein into other formats like protein coffee, cold brew coffee, protein tea as another example, and this is sparkling protein water as a third example.
So these are examples of where you really have to.
Make sure the ingredients can perform in these formats which requires something above and beyond the normal ingredients in the market today.
Awesome, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
