The Spring 2011 issue of Nutraceuticals Now is now available.

Excerpts of featured articles are available on this website:

Aenova Group: New Effervescent Product
BENEO: Simply Healthier
Stevia rebaudiana: The Sweetener Power of Nature

A Sense of Proportion

The world is a challenging place at the moment. Although visitors to Vitafoods are rightly focused on the product, pricing, regulatory and marketing problems and opportunities of their industries, the bigger picture matters to us too.

The widespread unrest in the Middle East with ‘people- power’ is changing long-standing political and strategic landscapes. Unrest in Tunisia and Egypt has led to changes of government and a coalition of nations has launched air attacks on military targets in Libya. Japan is still reeling from the tragedy of the recent earthquake, the resulting tsunami and desperate attempts to control damaged nuclear facilities at Fukishima. All this, while the global economy remains fragile (if not downright depressed) following the banking and financial crises of 2008/2009. Global markets, equities and currencies are volatile as traders and governments try to map a way forward out of the confusion.

In its own small way, the food industry reflects this crux. The rapidly rising price of staple food has been blamed for triggering much of the unrest in the Middle East and raising tensions elsewhere. Increased commodity, processing and packaging costs (due to rising oil prices) are impacting prices globally with the World Bank quoting a 15% increase in food prices in the four months between October 2010 and January 2011. In the UK, food price inflation is running at a reported 6.3% and in the USA, Feeding America reported a 46% increase in the number of people in the USA needing their assistance. Record numbers of floods, typhoons and unseasonal heat-waves, whether the result of global warming or some other factor, are impacting on the size and quality of agricultural crops and reducing the availability of good farmland. And all this at a time when scientists and agronomists are trying to find ways of meeting the challenge of feeding a rising world population which will reach 7 billion this year, up from 5 billion 20 years ago.

With disposable income likely to fall over the next 2 or 3 years, consumers will question every expenditure. Can the cost of dietary supplements and/or the additional premium of dietary supplements or functional foods be justified when staple ingredients need to be bought and the family needs to be fed?

Industry growth plans will have to address this fundamental question by investing in good marketing. Marketing that keeps the consumer interested, informed and persuaded of the benefits and value of its products, even when budgets are tight. But here’s another problem: just as consumer budgets are likely to be at their tightest, the strictures and limitations of EFSA’s rulings will begin to apply.

Our industry’s problems are trivial in comparison to much of what is happening in the world today. But for dietary supplement and functional foods manufacturers, and their customers, the storm clouds developing over Palma (where EFSA is based) still threaten to do serious damage. Only
by working constructively and creatively will we be able to navigate our way to a healthy and profitable future.

Henry Dixon
Commercial Director, Barrett Dixon Bell

Reb A 97 GT the first class safe natural pure molecule of sweetness

The sweetness of Stevia’s leaves was well known for century and used by amerindians Guarinis which is called Kaâ-hè-é.

In 1899, the first detailled botanic ( and also sweetness) description was made by the swiss botanist Moisés Santiago Bertoni during his research in Eastern Paraguay.

The species Stevia rebaudiana, commonly known as sweetleaf, sweet leaf, sugarleaf, or simply stevia, is widely grown for its sweet leaves. As a sweetener and sugar substitute, stevia’s taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar, although some of its extracts may have a bitter or licorice-like aftertaste at high concentrations.

In 1931, the two french scientists Bridel and Lavielle have isolated and cristallised the compounds which were responsible of the sweet taste of Stevia rebaudiana, Bertoni. The exact chemical formula of steviolglycoside ( aglycone and glycoside) were publised in 1955. Now, more than 12 differents molecules, with the steviol aglycone, was isolated form differents variants of Stevia rebaudiana, B.

In 2008, the Coca-Cola Company with the giant agricultural processing Cargill have obtained the GRAS approval from the FDA for the Rebaudioside A with a purity > 97%.

In September 2009, the French government has followed the same way with a temporary autorisation as food additive for 2 years for the Rebaudioside A more than 97% of purity in order to wait the European Commission Directive.

In 2010, The NDA panel experts of .EFSA ( European Food Safety Agency) gave a positive opinion on the safety of Steviolglycosides ( a mixture of Rebaudioside A and Stevioside mainly) with a minimum purity of 95% expressed in dry basis.

This article is available in full in the Spring 2011 issue of Nutraceuticals Now

BENEO, one of the leading manufacturers of functional ingredients, offers a range of solutions to enable sugar reduction in food products and prides itself on producing innovative ingredient solutions for food manufacturers. By concentrating on the taste, functionality and qualitative elements of a product, BENEO has developed its agglomerated sweeteners which are simple to integrate and provide a multitude of benefits. Here, Dr Thomas Walter, Head of Business Development at BENEO, provides insight into how its agglomerated sweeteners can be incorporated into products to provide sweetening solutions that are healthy and easy to use.

A review of the Mintel trend forecasts for 2011 shows that manufacturers are concentrating their efforts on product reformulations to ensure they meet the growing consumer demand for healthier nutrition. One of the major topics, sugar reduction, is still very high up on the food industry’s agenda. This issue is particularly pertinent as the entire sector prepares for the upcoming approval of Stevia, which claims to have mastered the delicate balancing act between calorie reduction and naturalness like no other intensive sweetener. The successful switch from saccharine, HFCS, fructose and glucose will allow food producers to make use of these ingredients in order to optimize their product offering with ease.

The use of agglomerated sweeteners is mainly for technological reasons. Agglomerates do not tend to dust or build up electrostatic energy and have a distinct flowability. This provides the producer with additional benefits, such as ease of transportation and use when measuring or filling. As they don’t absorb moisture, agglomerates can also be stored more easily. They dissolve quickly in fluids without forming lumps and, when consumed on their own, have a non-sandy texture in the mouth. The versatility of these agglomerates make them an excellent choice for use within ready-to-use instant drinks, compressed tablets, chewing gum and granulates, which are consumed with no water.

When several active and functional ingredients are used for the agglomeration, further advantages can be found. During the course of the agglomeration process, all of the elements are distributed evenly in the mixture, no matter how much or how little is used. An even distribution of the ingredient is therefore guaranteed, whether this is the sweet characteristic of an intensive sweetener such as Stevia, or the nutritionally enhanced profile of vitamins, or prebiotic fibres, such as inulin.

This article is available in full in the Spring 2011 issue of Nutraceuticals Now

The new product range from the Aenova Group offers a selection of high-quality and exclusive effervescent products, thus extending the company’s range and offering its customers the opportunity to stand out from the established mass market.

The new high-quality effervescent product range from the Aenova Group expands its portfolio and emphasises its position as one of the world’s largest suppliers of solid oral administration forms for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. The Aenova Group is one of the few companies in the branch to offer a full-service portfolio encompassing the purchasing of raw materials, analytics, packaging and logistics, alongside manufacturing and production. The ongoing objective of the company is the continual development of new product concepts and products which are tailored to the needs of customers and markets. Thus, since May 2010, Aenova has been offering a standard range of a variety of dietary supplements which cover different indication ranges. This standard product range has enabled the company to expand its customer services and create time-saving and cost-effective solutions for the international dietary supplements market.

With the new effervescent product range, Aenova has provided a diverse selection of high-quality and unique effervescent products. High-quality products which demonstrate particularly good market potential and correspond to current trends are developed on the basis of detailed market analyses, coupled with longstanding know-how and in-depth market knowledge.

This article is available in full in the Spring 2011 issue of Nutraceuticals Now