NutraIngredients-USA Global Round-up: The search for ethical brands, new sports nutrition data, and more
1. Consumers seek out ethical brands
Data presented at last week’s Health Ingredients Europe in Frankfurt suggested that big health food and drink companies must go small with their marketing tactics as skeptical consumers are shunning established firms and demanding ultra-ethical brands.
As reported by our European edition, just 33% of Americans say the supplement industry is trustworthy, said Marion Schumacher, senior conference producer for Informa. This stat is at odds with data from the 2018 CRN Consumer Survey on Dietary Supplements, which found that consumer confidence in products and trust in the industry remain strong.
According to CRN survey data, 87% of US adults expressed overall confidence in the safety, quality, and effectiveness of dietary supplements. In addition, 78% of respondents also perceived the dietary supplement industry as being trustworthy. CRN first asked this question (“To what extent do you perceive the dietary supplement industry as being trustworthy”) in 2016, when 73% responded favorably.
Back to HiE, Irene Kersbergen, market analyst for Innova Market Insights, added that 40% of US and UK consumers prefer small brands because they believe they are more dedicated to their products and have a better brand story.
She went on to say that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy into brands that are honest about where their products come from.
“Trust is low but this opens up opportunity for those brands making an effort to communicate transparency and establish trust within their product,” said Schumacher. “Millennials have more and more information available to them and trust is becoming more important but there’s been a decline in trust in brands.”
2. Lumina Intelligence dives into Sports Nutrition
A new sports nutrition-focused service from Lumina Intelligence tracks online consumer reviews and the product detail associated with them, across 20 countries, to deliver unique perspectives on high-growth food and nutrition markets.
The data should help to equip the industry with tools to measure the evolution of science, online consumer engagement and regulation and its impact on product formulation, labelling, sustainable sourcing and new product development.
“Sports Nutrition is a market that has seen and continues to see huge growth, an in particular in the online space. Our data is taken from leading online retailers and manufacturers’ e-commerce platforms and provides detailed ingredient breakdowns,” said Maureen Milne, program director for Lumina Intelligence.
Lumina Intelligence is an insights service recently launched by William Reed, publisher of food and drink news sites including Nutraingredients-USA and FoodNavigator-USA.
“The launch of sports nutrition as a dedicated category within Lumina Intelligence, a service which provides such unique insight from both a market and consumer perspective, takes our authority on the category to a new level. It also fits perfectly with our ongoing objective to inform business growth – and sports nutrition certainly falls into the ‘growth’ bracket,” commented Graham Twyford, executive director – EMEA / APAC at William Reed.
Examples of product data tracked by Lumina includes; health benefits, BCAA ratios, formats, population target per brand, and the best-selling brands in the online space.
Lumina Intelligence’s Tom Morgan will present more data on how companies can cash in on customer reviews at the upcoming NutraIngredients-USA Sports Nutrition Summit, January 23-24 in San Diego.
For more information and to register, please click HERE.
3. Communicating strong microbiome evidence
In an interview with our European edition, Professor John Cryan, principal investigator at the APC Microbiome Institute at the University College Cork, discusses why more effort has to be made in communicating evidence-supported microbiome-based science in what was admittedly a ‘very difficult science’.
“We’ve seen that recently with the press not able to understand the complexity of what is a very difficult science and how it is transmitted,” said Prof Cryan.
“[W]e need to be aware that there is a lot of snake oil out there, a lot of pseudoscience. We always need to look for evidence and be able to transmit that evidence in an appropriate way.”
There are many impressive benefits associated with probiotics, and the science is deepening with every passing week. NutraIngredients-USA is hosting a FREE webinar to discuss the health benefits of probiotics beyond digestive health, from weight management and immune support to sports nutrition and women's health. For more information on that, please click HERE.
