He described CPG Radar this way: “We’re looking at thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of products where we examine their ingredients, their claims, their formats and where they are selling to be able to bring all these inputs to life.”
Ghannoum, who co-founded microbiome company Biohm Health before launching this new artificial intelligence venture, will participate in a session titled ‘AI for Sports Nutrition’ at the 2025 Sports and Active Nutrition Summit (SANS). Joining Ghannoum will be Erin Herdeman, an intellectual property attorney at Merchant Gould.
Ghannoum will discuss what trends CPG Radar is seeing in the sports nutrition category, which is “a really tricky category to innovate in because consumers are very picky,” he said.
For example, Ghannoum compares consumer expectations in the sports nutrition space to what consumers expect out of probiotics.
“Most people use a probiotic because their doctor told them to look for a particular brand at CVS,” he said. “Consumers are not really ingredient savvy there. That’s not the case in sports nutrition where there are very opinionated consumers.”
Ghannoum said he refers to these sports nutrition enthusiasts as YouTube connoisseurs, people who are convinced certain ingredients do specific things to the body or that a product should have a particular lineup of ingredients.
“It’s really important sometimes to see what consumers actually think, and [CPG Radar] bakes that right in,” Ghannoum said. “We can see these consumer insights when it comes to what people actually are talking about regarding sports nutrition ingredients. We’ll unpack some of those at SANS.”
The speed of AI
Noting that OTC drug companies have an advantage because they make the claim the narrative rather than the ingredients, Ghannoum said that the supplement companies might be able to refine their marketing tactics.
“I barely know what the active ingredient is in Aleve, but I know it’s great for my headaches,” he said. “Our sports nutrition category doesn’t do that. We lean so heavily on what the ingredient story is because the claims you can actually make legitimately are muted a lot of times.”
He added that when sports nutrition companies elaborate stories surrounding the ingredient things start to get “muddy,” especially when the category is so saturated.
“How do you actually stand out?” Ghannoum asked.
That’s where big data and speed come into the picture, as CPG Radar scans for relevant branded ingredients, regulations, clinical trials, claims and more. For a big organization, using the internal compliance department to sort through science-backed claims can take ages, Ghannoum said, whereas CPG Radar cuts months out of that process.
“A lot of these tech tools are just turnkey now,” he added. “You just couldn’t do this five years ago.”
Sports & Active Nutrition Summit 2025
NutraIngredients-USA's Sports & Active Nutrition Summit, hosted in association with the American Herbal Products Association's Sports Nutrition Committee, will feature sessions focused on the evolving sports nutrition market, the regulatory landscape, creatine, A.I., women's health, social media, recovery (including the microbiome), innovative ingredients and more!
To register, please click HERE.
