Let’s face it.
There’s so much rip-snortin’ tooth-grindin’, booty-shakin’, pavement-scrapin’ energy out there that it’s easy to mistake it for the only function that works.
There’s caffeine in everything from water to vodka. Yerba mate and guarana are standard ingredients in everything from banana smoothies to beer.
Duuu-uude. Calm down. It’s time to chill. At least, for beverages, it is.
The calm side of functionality isn’t new: arguably, whiskey and wine, with their depressive effects, were in fact the first functional beverages, predating even (gasp!) Gatorade. Moving into the non-alcoholic realm, it’s interesting to note that there were entries in the chill-out beverage space as early on as 1998, just when the Red Bull wave was starting to wash over the West Coast. In fact, both SoBe (Zen Blend, with ginseng and schizandra berries) and – get this – a pre-Monster Hansen’s (with d-stress, featuring kava-kava and St. John’s Wort) – were pushing calm as a function at the same time that just a few skiers had begun fueling up between runs with the energy drinks.
But since that time, there hasn’t been a strong push in the functional beverage set toward the chill-out beverage. Sure, there’s been the occasional attempt to market behind calm, and vitaminwater b-relaxed has had a moderate level of success commensurate with the rest of the brand, but there’s always been something that drags down the buzz around slowing down.
Still, it appears we’re on the cusp of a new age of mellow.
First, consumer health trends point to it: stress and tension – and headaches – are the largest drivers of over-the-counter pharmaceutical sales. Anxiety and insomnia are on the rise. And there’s a growing emphasis on “mood foods” these days, especially as tension ratchets up in everyday life.
“There’s certainly a great deal on the growth of stress and actual depression,” said Steve Walton, whose firm, Health Focus International, monitors consumer attitudes. “The thing with stress is that people are concerned about it on a global level, and they are also affected by it on a personal level. Something like cancer, there’s a lot of global concern and there’s less personal involvement. With stress, it’s high on both sides of the coin, and it is growing.”
Meanwhile, the good-lifers and Yoga Moms are starting to get in the mood for some relaxation – and it’s not such a big step from much of the New Age aspect of the natural foods movement, according to industry observers.
“We’ve been looking at mood beverages from a broader standpoint,” said Kara Nielsen, who monitors trends for the Center for Culinary Development, a food industry consulting service. “It’s tied to the broadest strokes of the marketplace: the natural foods movement, the quest for a high-quality life. We’re having this flip. Do you need more energy, or do you need something to help put you in balance? There are people who are catching on to the benefit of relaxing.”
Nielsen’s agency watches culinary trends, and on a scale of 5, it ranks “mood foods” at 3 – creeping into the mainstream.
“There are enough of these drinks out there so there’s consumer recognition,” she says.
And product development trends point to calm as an exploitable opportunity for the right beverage, as well: a steady stream of chemical and herbal products and blends, from Tryptophan to L-theanine, are entering the market, some of which have solid science behind them. This year, a pair of ingredient companies, Kerry Nutritionals and Fortitech, have been touting their relaxation and mood-settling ingredient blends – a sure indicator of their belief in the mainstream appeal of calming or mood-settling products.
While cardio and bone health are at the top of any level of desired functionality, “calm comes immediately after that,” said Ram Chaudhari, Chief Scientific Officer at Fortitech, which recently issued a white paper on mood-enhancement. “Once you don’t have good sleep or calm, you run into all the obesity kind of issues – blood pressure, diabetes. This is what you get from not keeping your mood right.”
Additionally, calming drinks and foods have proven successful in other countries, particularly Japan, where chocolates enhanced with Gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) have become a major cultural phenomenon, one that has spread from busy housewives to overstressed business executives. “This idea of being able to enjoy a coffee or a chocolate – something that’s enjoyable and calming to boot – that’s something they want to believe in even more than energy,” said Brian Morgan, a research analyst with Euromonitor International. “The idea of a quick beverage or chocolate that can relax you is very popular thus far.”
Nevertheless, it’s going to take a long time to get that chilled-out vibe to the masses. It’s rare that beverage trends translate directly from Japan to the U.S., where the idea of functionality tends to revolve around delivering an immediate energy boost or a long-term health benefit. There are a varied number of ingredients and additives that can induce the calming effect, and a dominant one has yet to emerge. Meanwhile, despite what appears to be a solid level of demand for a product that could help consumers de-stress, no one has yet figured out the right package or sales pitch.