Nutracast: Inside Bayer's innovations in self care, personalized nutrition and healthy aging

Julia McCalmont, global head of R&D for LATAM and the VMS category at Bayer, discussed the company's longevity and its focus on delivering trusted self-care solutions to modern consumers. At the heart of this is Bayer’s new Dynamic Shared Ownership operating model, which enables teams to make decisions more closely aligned with consumer needs, fostering faster innovation and more relevant products.

McCalmont also highlighted Bayer's Healthy Aging Ecosystem, which aims to provide comprehensive solutions to support people's evolving wellness needs as they age. The offering starts with a biological age test from Chronomics and a wellness companion app to understand how factors like sleep and nutrition impact aging. The ecosystem also offers targeted supplements to help defend against cellular aging and improve overall resilience.

"When we looked at how Bayer was going to enter into the aging space, we wanted to focus not just on the symptoms of aging, but the quality of a person's life when they continue to age," McCalmont said. 

"So focusing more on what we would call healthspan, not just lifespan, and how quality of life changes as you age, where does that actually start? And this is where we drive into our medical insights to figure out what physiologically is happening to our bodies as we age. And that's where we've identified this root cause that is common across everyone, which is cellular aging." 

She also noted the growing consumer demand for personalized healthcare solutions and how the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of at-home testing and biohacking to support more individualized nutrition and wellness journeys.

Bayer emphasizes the importance of consumer education, especially in the face of increasing health misinformation. It works with a variety of influencers, from healthcare professionals to social media personalities, to provide reliable, science-based information to help people make informed decisions about their health and wellness.

When asked about consumer knowledge gaps, McCalmont said it is figuring out what they need and what their health objectives are.

"I think supplement consumers are unique in our overall consumer health industry because they are seeking opportunities based on emerging science, and some of that science is well proven, and some of it isn't," she explained.

"And the question I kind of have for a supplement consumer is, do you understand the science behind the nutrition supplement you're seeking? I think that if I look at the supplement space, I always would like to go back to first, what is the supplementation that I need? And I think that's one of the biggest gaps these consumers experience. They don't necessarily have clarity to the deficiencies they have.”

To hear more on Bayer’s offerings, including its new One A Day Pre-Pregnancy Planning product, listen to the NutraCast.

If you enjoy listening to the NutraCast, feel free to leave a review. You can subscribe on Apple​,  iHeart​, Spotify​ or wherever you get your podcasts.