Vitafoods Europe 2026: Inside Beneo’s ingredient solutions for health-focused F&B
13 May 2026 | Beneo
Karel Thurman, portfolio manager at Beneo, highlights the company’s innovative ingredients supporting weight management and metabolic health trends in mainstream F&B. He discusses how Beneo meets growing demand for high-protein, reduced sugar, and functional foods, while ensuring great taste. With clean label and natural ingredients top of mind, Thurman also shares insights into overcoming challenges in product development.
Frens first, proportion from Fier Foods Europe, 2026 in Barcelona.
We're at the Benio stand with Karen Turman, who's a portfolio manager.
Welcome to you.
So, Benio is showcasing ingredients focused on weight management and me and metabolic health.
How do you see consumer interest in these areas evolving, and how are you and Green in supporting these trends in more mainstream F&B products applications?
First of all, thank you for the interview, Joshua.
We are very glad to be here in Barcelona.
It's a very exciting show and just being here, it shows already the incredible dynamics which is around the whole theme of nutrition, weight management, and you see a lot of companies working around that.
I think if you look at that whole Weight management field, you see that there's a lot of people working on working on that, that there's a real drive from the consumer also to change that.
Also, if you look at FMC Gros published recently a report where you see that half of the people are actively wanting to do something with regards to weight management and reducing their weight.
Which makes sense because if you look today, we are today on the road population with more than 1 billion people who are facing obesity, which will evolve in the coming years towards 3 billion.
So it offers enormous challenges for nutrition, for nutritional solutions, and when you look into the consumer researchers, you see that a lot of People are looking actively into fiber and protein as active ingredients to reduce or to fight weight management, so.
At Bino we want to have more like a holistic approach.
We offer not only fibers but also diversified fibers, so that means that we are having not only the insoluble fibers from the chicory but also the soluble fibers from the chicory, but also the insoluble from beta glucose, for instance, which help to increase satiety.
The plant-based proteins with the fava proteins definitely, and then also with palatinos we have a glycemic sugar, which stimulates the endogenous GLP1 production.
So definitely a wide range of ingredients which we can offer which play into this whole weight management trend.
Interesting.
So with the increase in demand for higher protein and reduced sugar and functional foods, how are you ensuring that your greens maintain both nutritional benefits and great taste, particularly in more challenging product categories like plant-based?
Yes, first of all, at B we can count on a very great team who is working on the applications.
So we have a lot of application expertise within our within our team.
So we have the Bio Technology Center taking care of that and actually effectively we're working on that because we know, for instance, that plant-based proteins can have some off taste, and then we are actively working on formulations which help to counter that.
At the same time, we also know that Even people on a weight management trajectory, they are actively looking for still indulgence, having pleasant food experiences, and there enter our ingredients because they have certain functionalities which are not only from a nutritional point of view, interesting, but we can also replace, for instance.
Fat and having the same with insulin and having the same mouthfeel as you would have with the fat.
So that's very interesting to see.
We have here some samples which our team has prepared.
This is, for instance, a high protein tortilla chip.
With faba protein, and faba protein has the advantage of not only being a plant protein, so bringing protein in, but also giving some crunchiness and a nice texture of the chips.
At the same time, we blend in rice protein to have a more complete amino acid profile, so we try to combine both the nutritional and the technological aspects.
Another one.
Which we have is this plant-based chocolate dessert where we have both protein and fiber in, which, from a nutritional point of view, is very interesting, but at the same time, it delivers a very pleasant taste and mouthfeel.
OK, so can you share some insights into the biggest challenges that food manufacturers might face when incorporating the ingredients in these prototypes?
Into their mainstream consumer products and how as a company you help them overcome these barriers and these hurdles.
So I think we touched briefly on it.
I think the challenges are on the one side, taste and texture.
So a lot of these ingredients will bring in some less taste or might impact texture where you don't want to compromise on that if you are developing new products.
So there we have that new technologies.
Who is helping you in formulating and finding the right place for those ingredients which can at the same time give the nutritional benefits.
At the same time it's also about the regulatory framework and the science.
So within our company we have the Beno Institute, the Benneo Institute, which is actively doing research, highly scientific research to make sure that These ingredients which we offer are also backed up with sufficient science so that you can make the right claims as an ingredient as a food manufacturer.
So I think these are very important things.
So we are combining the expertise both on taste and texture and from nutrition and regulatory frameworks to make sure that our customers can develop in the right way.
It kind of makes sense.
So if we look ahead, what do you think will be the next big trend in functional ingredients for mainstream applications?
I think if there's one thing which we have learned, Joshua, is the tremendous increase in knowledge about food ingredients which has happened over the past years.
If we would have been talking about prebiotics 10 years ago, a lot of people wouldn't have known what it is.
These days, prebiotics, probiotics, it's a very known terminology.
So that means that the consumer gets more and more aware about the impact of food on their health and is understanding the mechanisms behind it.
So you have a Much more educated consumer at the same time you see that they are able to monitor immediately the effect of the ingredients they consume and the food they consume because you have more and more monitoring devices which can help you to track for instance blood glucose levels, etc.
So they see it immediately.
So that means that people will get more and more into a personalized nutrition, and I think that's definitely a challenge.
At the same time we see a lot happening around protein, so people wanting to increase protein, but at the same time, you know that the sustainability is also important.
So what we expect is that people will move more and more into the direction of.
Proteins for that protein enrichment because from a sustainability point of view it is also very much much more sustainable than the animal derived proteins which we have today.
So I think those are the main challenges we will face in the industry in the coming years.
