Unwrapped: New dairy-based opportunities for immune health
25 Feb 2021 | FrieslandCampina Ingredients
Over the last year, consumers have increasingly sought to improve their immune health, especially via products with strong scientific substantiation. According to FrieslandCampina Ingredients’ webinar, a promising ingredient in this space is bioactive proteins derived from dairy’s whey fraction, such as lactoferrin. The webinar also delves into the latest consumer insights and the role dairy plays in health and immunity.
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Hi everyone.
A warm welcome to today's webinar on immune health, learning more about trends that shape the market and specifically the role of dairy.
Currently in the northern hemisphere, we are in the midst of the flu season.
In the Netherlands, actually, we were just hit by the largest snowstorm in a decade.
Our awareness of the role of nutrition on health and our aging process is growing significantly, and of course there's COVID-19 in our lives.
We can say that the interest in immune health is at an all-time high.
A consumer survey from FMCG Guru shows that actually 70% of the consumers want to improve their immune health.
Products with an immune health claim show to have a kegger of 15%.
Indicating that new consumers are looking for nutritional solutions that support their immune health.
So as more consumers are interested, also more consumers are becoming educated.
It is shown that 47% of consumers actively research ingredients to help decide on their best options.
Scientific substantiation of active ingredients and its communication is becoming more relevant for consumers and their trust level.
All driving new opportunities in the marketplace.
Now it's time to further explore the immune health benefit area with two high-quality webinars featuring Robert McMahon, president at Seven Hills Strategies, and Joost van Neerwen, professor of mucosal immunity at Wagling University, and senior scientist at Friesland Camppina.
Myself, Miriam Petters, marketing manager within Fishel Camppina Ingredients, will take you along.
We will host a Q&A at the end of the webinar.
So in case of any questions, feel free to ask them, and we will try to answer them all.
If you don't make it within the session, don't worry, we will make sure to answer them after the webinar.
Now, I would like to give the floor to Robert.
Thank you, Miriam.
Today I'm going to take a few minutes to talk about the central role of immune health as a benefit space for consumers and some of the implications of that importance of immune health for innovating in the foods and ingredients area.
So one of the things that we really understand about immuneHealth is that it is one of the very few evergreen benefit spaces for consumers.
While Miriam alluded to the fact that certainly consumers' perception of immune health is heightened during COVID.
It's also very true that immune health was one of the most important benefit spaces before the pandemic, and it is likely to continue to be an important benefit space far after we have gotten control of that phenomenon.
The other issue with immune health is that it's truly global.
We'll talk a little bit about how it may vary across different regions, but do be aware that in addition to its importance, it is somewhat universal.
And here you'll see some, Information that in places like China, which remain a rapidly growing market, that immune health remains one of the most important consumer benefit spaces, and that even outside of China, really all across Southern Asia, you can find a similar focus on immune health and ways to improve it.
The other issue that's so important to consider in this area is that consumers have really internalized that nutrition is a clear path to supporting immune health.
So while some consumers may have issues about physical activity or proper mental health, many consumers, as here indicated in the 2019 survey, almost half of consumers will actually be looking to modify or improve their diets as a way to actually support immune health.
So even while we're in COVID, immune health is crucial to consumers.
It was a key benefit space before COVID and it's likely to continue to be one of the central benefit areas that will be innovating in for quite some time.
Now Because immune health is a crucial benefits base, we should not make the mistake to think that immune health means the same thing to all consumers.
And in fact, immune health can mean many different things, depending on the kinds of populations you're serving, the regions you're operating in, and so there's a lot of creativity that's needed in order to understand how your particular consumers see immune health, so that you can tailor the kinds of science support and other kinds of education and engagement to really connect with them.
And here I'll just give you a few examples of some of the different ways that people see immune health.
One of the ways is, for instance, in the area of immune system development.
So whether you're working across the pediatric segment or perhaps the maternal segment, issues around the appropriate nutritional support of how the immune system develops might be one of the key ways that those populations would see the issue of immune health.
Similarly, at the other end of the spectrum, if you think about the really exploding area of elderly nutrition, we can also think of the maintenance of immune function.
So, as in elderly adults, when they start to have additional challenges in immune health, nutrition can be targeted in a way that helps them to maintain as best they can, their immune function and and health.
For other populations, immune health might mean something like the resistance to it, illness or perhaps the recovery from, right?
So many people are sort of looking to maintain a state of wellness and depending on their needs they may be looking for nutrition and ingredients that can help them stay in that zone.
Now, in addition to the kinds of concerns that different populations have, even the way that we understand immune health is actually rapidly evolving.
So an example of this would be the issue of the microbiome.
And if you think over the last 5 or 10 years, how rapidly our understanding of the roles that the microbiome play in immune health, it actually starts to become a way to communicate and engage customers about immune health.
Similarly, we can talk about the maintenance of wellness, or even the really established example of gut immunity.
And you may recognize how firmly a concept like 70% of the immune system basically resides in the gut, how that resonated, with lay audiences and consumers across many markets.
So remember that immune health can mean different things to different consumer populations, and you have to tailor the science and the engagement in order to reach them in the way that they're actually thinking about it.
So the importance of immune health to consumers is not restricted to just the lay population.
We know that immune health is incredibly important because regulatory agencies have recognized it as a compelling benefit.
And because the major regulatory frameworks of the world like EFSA, like the FDA, like the Chinese FDA have recognized the importance of immune, health, they've placed a relatively high and growing demand on the kinds of scientific evidence that are needed to support those kinds of products and the communications around them.
So, one of the things we understand is that even though there are some differences between the European and the US and for example, the Chinese regulatory frameworks, there are some common themes and two of those common themes is that they will constantly be looking for issues that demonstrate the safety of ingredients and foods that are targeted towards immune health.
And increasingly they will demand evidence of efficacy.
Now some of us may recognize that not so long ago, the regulatory agencies were primarily concerned with establishing and maintaining safety.
But really that's an evolving demand from the regulatory agencies, and you will find commonly that additional evidence of the why we're doing these innovations in immune health are required along with demonstration of safety.
Yeah Some organizations will see that additional demand for safety and efficacy data is quite a high hurdle.
But another way to look at the evolving regulatory landscape is to understand that this demand for evidence actually creates tremendous opportunity.
And one of the ways that it creates opportunity is by allowing organizations who bring the right kind of evidence forward to create sustained differentiation from the vast amount of noise that we see in the marketplace.
The noise of sort of weekly substantiated claims or really not talking about benefits at all.
And two of the ways that you can get at this kind of evidence really are through both fundamental as as clinical evidence that one of our speakers will really address quite.
And when you bring this kind of safety and efficacy data forward as Miriam mentioned, it's one of the ways for companies to really establish both trust and credibility in the kinds of solutions that they bring.
One of the things that I'll touch on again is that.
Really in the current environment there's a lot of opportunity to create the right kinds of partnerships that can help you bring that kind of data together so we'll talk a little bit more about that, but one of the principles here is nobody has to do it on their own anymore.
There are ways to reach out to experts across different domains in order to help bring this evidence together.
Now one of the other things we should recognize in this space.
Is that the amount of R&D activity.
To both develop safety and efficacy data in immune health.
As as protect the resulting innovations is on the sharp increase, and I have just a couple of examples here to sort of demonstrate that.
If you look at basically the amount of total literature that has something to do with immune health and nutrition, what you see is a dramatic increase over the last decade or so, reaching enormous peaks.
So there's, there's an, there's a lot of fundamental and clinical research going on, and this rise in activity is sort of reflective of the demand for safety and efficacy data, yeah.
But that's not where it ends.
We also see that organizations are really harvesting that research in order to protect innovations through intellectual property and other kinds of protection mechanisms, right?
And so not only do we have extraordinarily high levels of IP submissions and immune health.
But if you look here on the right you'll see many of the organizations that you would expect to see then Nestle's, the Unilever's, a lot of companies out of China.
And other emerging markets and so what we see is both an increase in the amount of activity to substantiate claims in immune health and a large increase in the effort to actually protect those innovations and all of this leads to the growing opportunity to bring innovative and sustainable innovations to immune health.
The last bit I want to bring together here is this issue of using the right kinds of partnerships to develop and bring together the data that will lead to compelling innovations and immune health, and really you can think across three large domains of partnerships in order to see what's right for your individual situation.
The the first domain where you can seek out the right kinds of partnerships and immune health is of course with academic experts.
They bring a depth and a breadth of knowledge to the body of literature and evidence around safety and efficacy.
They bring an independent view as to the strength of that evidence, and they can often help in the translation of immune health data to broader audiences because as we know, immune health can be a difficult area to explain.
We also have the area of contract research organizations where they can bring specialized models, experimental models, they can bring additional expertise to application.
And finally, don't forget that suppliers themselves are often an enormous source of expertise, particularly around the commercial applicability and product compatibility.
So when it really comes down to applying the innovation in product forms that are right for your particular markets, suppliers end up being sort of a key resource to bring that sort of expertise.
OK, so I hope this helps to bring forward a little bit of the crucial nature of immune health to consumers, which is higher than it's ever been and will continue to be in the future and really the sum of the implications of that for how we bring innovations in this space.
OK, Miriam.
Thanks, Robert.
Thanks for sharing your insights on and giving us an understanding of where the opportunity is in innovation in the immune health space.
Before we are moving to Yost, we'd like to ask you the following question.
And we will address the question in the end of the webinar.
How can an ingredient supplier provide optimal support in educating consumers on the scientific benefits of an active ingredient?
Answer A, provide a summary with scientific evidence on the active ingredients.
Answer B, provide an active website for a branded ingredient containing consumer understandable information and insights.
Answer C, provide regulatory support on potential health claims for an end formulation.
Answer D is a combination of answer A to C.
And answer no support required in educating consumers.
This will be the responsibility of companies selling the end product.
Now I'd like to give the floor to Jost Verve.
Hello and welcome to this webinar on milk components and antiviral immunity.
My name is Joos van Neren, and I would like to talk to you about these topics.
And just by starting off, I think this is a moment when our world changed last year in early January, this post by the WHO on pneumonia of an unknown cause in China.
Which we now know was the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And that only underscores how important antiviral immunity is.
When you look at different age groups in the population and you ask yourself, who is vulnerable to develop respiratory tract infections, then that's typically the very young and the very old.
What you can see in this slide is the number of deaths due to influenza.
Each year and you can see that the curve goes up in the very young and the very old.
So these are the two groups that you would be most interested in when you talk about supporting antiviral immunity.
When you look at the current situation with SARS-COV 2, you see that it's mostly the elderly people and the young are not involved, luckily I should add.
If you then look at the type of immune responses and I don't bother with all the different lines, but what you can clearly see is that Immunity in early life and late life differs from immunity in adult life, so it's really important to understand how this immune system works and why these are the points where people are vulnerable to respiratory tract infection.
But maybe something completely off topic.
The moderator just mentioned in the introduction that we're in the middle of the flu season.
And because of my personal interest, I looked that up if that's the case.
And actually, It's not, and this is very interesting.
What you can see here on the right top is the incidence of influenza in the northern hemisphere, and you can see it for the last 4 years.
And what you can see is around March April.
In 2020, influenza stopped, and it didn't come back at the end of the year, which you see a start of the flu season at the end of the year and every year before that.
And when you see it for the southern hemisphere, it's even more clear because the peak influenza season is in the middle of the year and last year it was absolutely zero.
So Apparently we are doing something right because all the measures we're taking across the globe are actually keeping influenza outside of the door.
OK, back to on topic, immunity.
What is immunity?
Maybe let's start there a little bit.
If you take a look at the graph to the right.
I would define immune health as a situation in which you have a balanced immune response that is really regulated.
When your immune response becomes inadequate, you move to the left in the graph, and this means you do not have a good immune response to pathogens or to cancer that occurs in the body and you are at risk for those diseases.
On the other hand, if you move to the right, if your immune response is Overactive, you develop inflammation, and that can be allergy in early life or it can be any of the infection, inflammation related diseases that we typically see occurring later in life.
Now when you look at the top of the figure, this balanced immune response is dependent on Your genetic makeup, but also on your diet, the microbiota, so the bacteria that are in your gut, your environment, but also your age.
And, of course, on the right, it depends on are you challenged by encountering pathogens or allergens.
So I think this is trying to explain the importance of diet and homeostasis and balance in the immune system because that's really what defines immune health.
Now, how does an immune response work?
What you can see in this graph is that really early at the start of an infection.
You see the purple line coming up, and that is the innate immune system.
And the innate immune system is typified by cells that can respond rapidly to a broad array of infectious agents.
And what they do is they start producing cytokines, inflammatory antiviral cytokines that come up a little bit later, and only, around, a week after the start of the infection, you see the T cells coming up.
The T cells and later the antibodies, and the T cells and the antibodies are part of the adaptive immune system.
Now, just introducing the players a little bit more.
The, innate immune cells are typically neutrophils that occur at, the infection site very quickly.
The natural killer cell macrophages that, that eat bacteria and viruses and dendritic cells that do the same, but show them to the adaptive immune system.
At the other spectrum, the adaptive immune cells are the T cells which can be either the helper T cells or the killer T cells.
The B cells and the immunoglobulins that the B cells produce.
And The adaptive and the innate immune system communicate with each other and in that sense you can understand that when you first target the innate immune system you then activate the adaptive immune system and what the adaptive immune system does, the production of antibodies, also influences the innate immune system that then can recognize pathogens a bit better.
When you Vaccinate, you give a, pathogen to the immune system, and, at the right, this is what you want to achieve.
You want to activate these T cells and these B cells because they, , induce long term memory to your pathogen.
And on the left, you need an adjuvant to enhance the immune system, but I also added in food because food, when it interacts with the immune system, is almost always at the innate side of the immune system.
OK, what are the pathogens that you are exposed to when we're talking about respiratory tract infection?
Now, mostly this is, the influenza viruses, the RSV, rhinovirus, and, currently, SARS-CoV-2.
And as you can see here in this epidemiological, status from , a central station, in the Netherlands, you can see that all of these occur over the year.
And these are really sentinel stations, so this is not A complete view of what's happening because then SARS-CoV-2 would be much higher, but it's a good indication of the types of viruses that are linked to respiratory tract infection.
Then comes the next step.
You are exposed to such a virus and the innate immune system tries to recognize it.
How does it work now?
What you can see in the different circles is that the innate immune system has a large number of TLRs, toll-like receptors, that are able to recognize patterns that recur in pathogens.
And for the respiratory tract viruses that are all single stranded RNA viruses, which you can see at the top is that the TLR7, TLR 8 are especially relevant because they are the receptors that recognize these viruses.
They then can produce type 1 and type 3 interferons that are directly antiviral and eliminate the virus, but they can also attract other innate immune cells like NKT cells, neutrophils, etc.
They also produce pro-inflammatory cytokines after recognition.
And, these help in attracting these other cells, but also play a role in enhancing the T cell activity and inducing the adaptive immune response to the virus.
Now there's a new concept that Suggests that the innate immune system that is not Until recently, not thought to confer a long term memory in the immune system because that resides in the adaptive immune system, that that can also happen in the innate immune system.
It's not as specific as in the adaptive immune system and independent of the adaptive immune system.
And how this works is what you can see here in this graph.
You have a primary stimulation, and then looking at the blue line, you see an initial response of the innate immune response.
Then the cells can rest a little bit, and when they are , again, challenged by infection or by stimulation in vitro, you can see that the secondary response to the same stimulus becomes higher, and that's a result of the training of the innate immune system.
And of course if the innate immune system responds better, that is linked to enhanced immunity to infection.
What's, also very important when you talk about nutrition and the immune system is the micronutrients.
We can look at a lot of nutrients, but the micronutrients are the ones that are really the basal need of the body for normal function and for the immune system, the normal function of the immune system.
If you do not have an adequate intake of these micronutrients, your immune system will just not be, , functioning optimally.
And what you, for example, see, vitamin D is strongly linked to respiratory tract infection, and that's also something that's often discussed in relation to influenza and also now.
But what do we know about milk components and antiviral activity?
Actually, quite a bit.
We know that, from studies on raw milk, that the intake of unpasteurized milk in, children that grow up on farms is associated with a lower prevalence of asthma, but also of respiratory tract infections.
And, milk contains, Many, components, and all of the components in this graph are associated with immune function.
And when you're looking at antiviral immunity, it's, as I already indicated, the, the, micronutrients that are very important, but also lactiferonn, Vitamins that can be dissolved in the fat fraction of the milk, immunoglobulins like bovine IgG, as as, oligosaccharides, like, cellulose.
Now, IgG is, , a very large protein that is produced by the B cells, and these IgG molecules can bind to, pathogens.
So when you're exposed to pathogens and the B cells become activated, the B cells that produce antibodies or immunoglobulins specific for the pathogen will start to produce them, and they will also start to divide and make more and more of them.
By doing so they can bind to the bacteria or to the viruses or to the allergens and enhance their phagocytosis because the constant region of these immunoglobulins binds to receptors on the innate immune system and then they will engulf anything that is bound to it.
We also know that IGT can neutralize human RSV.
And prevent infection in vitro models.
Now, just to illustrate this, what you see on the left is a number of human pathogens, E.
Coli, salmonella, and streptococcus pneumonia, and when you incubate them with a control protein, you only see the single dots, which represent single bacteria.
And at the bottom when you do this, not with a control protein, but with bovine IgG, you see aggregation of bacteria, and that is because an antibody has two antigen binding sites, and when each of these binding sites binds to one bacterium, you will get large aggregates that you can just see under the microscope.
Now moving to the right, if you look at the y axis, that's the percentage of inhibition of RSV infection.
And, what you can see in the red curve is a therapeutic monoclonal antibody that is used in, RSV infection, and you can see that clearly the more you titrate into this assay, The higher the level of protection, and you can completely inhibit the infection of these cells with RSV.
If you do that with human serum IgG in the orange, you see you can reach the same level of protection.
You just need more of the antibody to do that, and that's logical because a therapeutic monoclonal antibody.
Is a preparation in which every antibody is specific for this RSV and in human serum, you have a mixture.
Now, when you look at bovine milk IgG, they can actually also neutralize the infection in vitro, which is very interesting, I think.
Now continuing with the IgG and I introduced the concept of innate immune training earlier, and what you can see in this graph is actually such an experiment.
What we did is we incubated.
The cells either in RPMI, which is just culture medium, or in bovine IgG.
And then rested the cells and stimulated them with either LPS.
R848 or PAM.
And you can see at the bottom in red that LPS is representative for Gram-negative bacteria.
Which, for example, salmonella and E.
Coli belong to R848 is relevant for single stranded RNA viruses, and B is representative of Gram positive bacteria.
What you can see in all cases is that the training with bovine IgG leads to an enhanced activation as evidenced by the production of IL-6 at the bottom graphs or TNF alpha at the top graphs.
And I think especially for our age for AIDS, we see this very clearly, and this suggests that the innate immune system becomes more active upon re-stimulation and rechallenge with such pathogens.
No, lectiferon.
Lactiferon is a known protein that has immunomodulatory activity but also antiviral activity.
And what you should know is when you look at elderly people, And this is a study in very old people, but the type 1 interferon response is really very much decreased, and what you see in this graph is blood cells stimulated with an influenza virus, and after that you measure the type 1 interference.
In the sup of these cultures, and you see really a dramatic decrease, which means that this TR 7.
Response to the virus is not functioning very in old age.
Now we did a study with lectiferin in elderly women, and they consumed lectiferin for 3 weeks, and then we collected blood and stimulated it with this TR 7 ligand, and we saw an increase in the production of interferon alpha after these 3 weeks.
We saw an increase in TNF alpha and also in IL-6, so this might be a representative of enhancing the antiviral immunity in these people.
Now, there are also quite a number of, human studies, that have looked at, infection and lactiferonn, and what you can see here, there are 4 studies, on respiratory infection in adults.
3 of them saw, an, increased, or a decreased, number of infections in the group receiving lactiferonn, and in one case, it was unchanged.
And more recently people are starting to look at lactiferin and COVID, and there are now two studies that have been published.
Both of them did not have a control group, so we cannot make any firm conclusions, but the study results do suggest that maybe Lactiferon can help in preventing severe disease, but as I stated, we really need more controlled trials to say anything with certainty about that effect.
Now I hope that during this webinar, I convinced you that micronutrients are really essential for a normal function of the immune system.
That respiratory viruses are often or in almost all cases single stranded RNA viruses.
That's Antiviral immunity is very important for preventing severe respiratory tract infections, and I say especially severe because it's the severity that's really the issue.
You do not in any way by nutrition, prevent infection completely, but you can prevent the severity of infection.
We think that some milk components like lactiferonn, both on IgG, can at least offer antiviral immune support when you look at the effect on the immune system, and currently lactiferin is also studied in several studies on the effects of lactiferonn on prevention or at least amelioration of COVID-19.
Thanks, Joost for that interesting talk and educating us on immune health, dairy antiviral immunity, and the absence of the flu season as a result of the lockdown.
Before we move to the Q&A, we'd like to ask you two more questions that we will address during the Q&A.
The first one, would you consider launching an immune health proposition with antiviral benefits?
Yes, most likely maybe or no.
The other question that we have, are you planning in the next 12 to 18 months to develop products with lactoferon that support immune health?
Again, the answers are yes, most likely, maybe, or no.
We hope you enjoyed both talks today and are inspired to tap into these opportunity fields.
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Thanks everyone for listening.
Robert Yost, thank you for your great presentations about immune health, consumer trust, and the role of dairy and antiviral immunity.
With that, I would like to open up the floor for questions.
As mentioned, if we don't address.
Your question within the session.
Don't worry, we will make sure that we answer them after the webinar.
But now first, let's go to the results of the polling questions.
So let's go to the first one.
How can an ingredient supplier provide optimal support and educating consumers on the scientific benefits of an active ingredient?
Let's have a look at the results.
Clearly we see there's consensus about the preferred role of suppliers.
Majority in this case show interest in answer A to C and indicating that brand owners are open and eager to support, to get support from suppliers.
I think this is very insightful for our industry, whereas I believe also the industry is already moving towards.
And as Robert indicated, a great area of opportunity for brand owners and suppliers to collaborate and to develop it further.
Moving to the next polling question, would you consider launching an immune health proposition with Oh, let me have a look with , and of my benefits.
And I think as you can see, there's a bit of a mixed response.
So perhaps not everyone is yet convinced on the opportunity or might believe the solution is too specific for the consumer.
I think it's a really nice moment to raise a question from the audience.
This is John from Minnesota, and this question is quite challenging, but I'd like to address it to Joost.
Do you really believe with nutrition, you can prevent infection?
Oh, thanks for asking.
I think, we have to be realistic, of course.
Of course, you cannot completely prevent respiratory tract infection with nutrition, but what you can do is, you can help to support an optimal function of your immune system so that at the time you become infected, your immune system kicks in and, makes sure that you do not end up with severe disease.
So, I think, Preventing all infections is not going to happen with nutrition, but by supporting the immune system, you may help in reducing the severity of these infections.
And of course when you get reinfection, then a good immune response will help preventing reinfection.
Great.
Thanks for addressing the challenging question, Joos.
I'd like to move on to another question.
We see that the science is still emerging for many ingredients and health benefits.
So the question comes, how to best educate consumers on the efficacy of an active ingredient?
And I'd like to ask this question to Robert.
Thanks, Miriam.
Great question.
I think, I think as we've seen in the talk, we can recognize that The immune system and the role of nutrition is a really complex topic, and those that are working in this area often, I think, underestimate.
How much work we need to do to really help translate that science to concepts that are accessible to the consumer.
So when you're thinking about engagement and educational outreach, really do the homework to understand where your particular consumers are in that aspect of immune system and work to find the language and the positioning that really connects with them.
Try to avoid the temptation.
Just try and tell the consumer everything we know about it, it's often overwhelming and they can't really connect so know your consumer and work hard on translation.
Yeah, great answer, Robert.
I would, I would fully agree.
And, and as scientists, often we like to communicate everything, but as you mentioned, indeed, be careful and, make the right decision there, how to address it to the consumers effectively.
We do have another interesting question.
This one is from Steffi.
The question is, do orally administered bovine immunoglobulins survive the digestive tract?
A little bit more specific.
So Joost, if you could comment on that one.
That's also an interesting question.
I think there's quite a bit of data on digestion of immunoglobulins and also lacpar for that matter.
And what you typically see is that in adults you can still pick up probably up to Between 1 and 10% of IgG that you give in orally in fecal matter.
In infants, that percentage is much higher and it's probably around 40 to 50%.
So that indicates that if you look at the small intestine, which is the first part of your digestive tract, Even more will be functionally active and will be able to have an immune function in the GI tract.
Great.
Thanks, Jos.
I hope that answer covered your question , Steffi.
I do have another one, Yost, for you coming from, from Linda out of California.
The question is, what package of ingredients would you combine and advise to boost immune health, specifically minimize respiratory infections.
OK, thanks for asking, Linda.
As I indicated earlier, completely preventing a respiratory infection is probably not going to happen, but I think it would all start with a really balanced, healthy lifestyle and diet, and such a diet should be rich in vegetables and fruits, but also dairy and fish.
And and meat, of course.
And in this way you should have an intake of micronutrients that are sufficient to guarantee a normal function of your immune system.
And, and it would also be enough unsaturated fatty acids, omega 3, omega 6 fatty acids, and fibers.
Now on top of that, you can think of adding supplements to increase, especially vitamin D, C, zinc, and selenium.
Intake because these are highly relevant for immune function in relation to respiratory tract infection.
And of course there are the more specialized components like for example lac ferri that have shown promising results in some studies as I discussed earlier and of course there are other dairy and non-dairy ingredients that can be considered.
But when you formulate, for example, lactoferin, I would recommend to also add these 4 micronutrients at the level of the daily recommended intake to optimize immune support.
And in that way you make sure that your immune system is ready to take on these infections.
Great.
Thanks for addressing that question.
I think it matches very with the feedback from the consumers that we see in several studies where the consumer indicates they are motivated to make changes in their daily diet, but they also show a lot of motivation for the supplements in order to support and maintain a healthy immune system.
Looking at the time, I still see we have, some time left for another question.
This one for Robert.
With the knowledge that immunity remains important for the coming years for the consumers, what would you recommend to the industry to invest in, and specifically serving the needs of the consumer for the near future?
Right, good question.
So I, you know, in, in my, in my view, I think we are coming out of a period where the industry has really focused to strongly develop individual ingredients that have good evidence of safety and efficacy and supporting immune health.
And I think going forward, I think one of the places the industry can really look for is the creative development of combinations or blends that would actually not only reflect more broadly the role of nutrition and immune health.
And support, but really be able to provide some, you know, differentiation in the market.
So look towards creative blends, look for, you know, new combinations of things, and there's a lot of scientific evidence out there on which to be creative in that space.
Yeah, great.
Thanks, thanks a lot, Robert, for that answer.
I think also very inspiring, and motivating for us as an industry to, to work on.
I would like to conclude over here and if there's any question left, please do not hesitate to reach out to one of us.
We will make sure that we address all of your questions on an individual basis if we could not address today.
I would like to mention in the left corner of all of you, there's ability to download an immune health brochure where more information is shared.
And again, thanks a lot for listening in.
Stay healthy, stay safe, and wish you a great day or evening.
Thanks.
