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In reality, the future of functionality will be based on delivering balanced nutrition with multiple nutritional benefits for specific usage occasions in a convenient way, in a product that meets consumers’ ever-discriminating taste standards. These products will also be conscious of potential negative ingredient impacts such as heavy carbohydrates or sugar levels. With the right mix of high-quality, all-natural ingredients, a product can deliver a high benefit to calorie ratio, and can also offer several different kinds of nutritional benefits at once.
In addition to efficacious levels and the right balance of ingredients, functional products should also highlight synergistic enhancements by combing specific ingredients. For example, we know that green tea’s antioxidant activity is enhanced when Vitamin C is part of the mix; therefore, we use both ingredients. The use of protein and fiber with carbs helps to manage blood sugar levels, which in turn helps with energy levels and satiety. Using a pre-biotic fiber and a heart healthy fat source promotes a better vitamin and mineral absorption efficiency.
Of course, it is important to remember that the source of ingredients is crucial – it is imperative that the ingredients being used are of the highest quality available. But when you use well-sourced and carefully-forumulated ingredients, your functional benefits can expand.
The bottom line is you measure functionality by the benefits one receives when putting something into the body. The future of this category is offering truly functional, quality ingredients at efficacious levels, while still keeping the serving size and calorie count down - a quick, efficient and effective functional beverage that truly delivers the “return on investment” that consumers are asking for. Balanced nutrition always has, and always will be a cornerstone of a healthy lifestyle.
When Functional Beverages Malfunction, We Look to Juice
By Palo Hawken, Bossa Nova
Juices can challenge the dominant paradigm of synthetically enhanced functional beverages, and capture a new, growing market demanding higher quality and quantifiable efficacy from healthy products.
Why? Synthetic vitamins might be the nutritional platform of today’s popular “healthy” functional beverages, but a growing body of medical research is challenging conventional wisdom about their efficacy. Meanwhile, new research validates what sounds to us like common sense: that plant-sourced vitamins work better than their synthetic cousins.
This functional superiority has been attributed to the complex family of micronutrients that always accompanies natural vitamins within their food matrix, such as in whole fruit or fruit juices. When vitamins are consumed in this form, beneficial interactions between vitamins and their related nutrients—or cofactors—occur. For example, nutrients like ascorbic acid and beta-carotene never occur in nature without their family of related micronutrient cofactors. Ascorbic acid needs the cofactors rutin, bioflavenoids, ascorbinogen and factors J, K and P to unlock its full potential to become whole vitamin C. Natural beta-carotene always occurs in vegetables and fruits along with other carotenoids to create benefits that add up to more than the sum of their parts.
In contrast, the body works hard to eliminate synthetic vitamins if important cofactors are not present, and in some cases even treats them as toxins and allergens. A recent Harvard study questions the effectiveness of synthetic vitamins and even suggests that ingredients like folic acid in high doses cause potential harm. Additional research linked regular consumption of these isolated vitamins to higher risks of cancer and other diseases. Vitamin-laced beverages often include synthetic beta-carotene, commonly derived from acetylene gas, alone without its cofactors—dramatically limiting its effectiveness as a vitamin A precursor.
Perhaps the most widely used functional ingredient in beverages, vitamin C can be added in either its whole-food form or a synthetic isolated form. These two different approaches illustrate the difference between the dominant method of fortifying functional beverages and the potential promised by the emerging whole-food approach.
Synthetic Ascorbic Acid’s Story
The journey of synthetic ascorbic acid (a.k.a. vitamin C), begins in a factory in southern China that synthesizes it from cornstarch, with the help of hydrochloric acid, over 20 chemical reactions, and acetone -- nail polish remover. A second company adds this synthetic ascorbic acid, destined for the beverage industry, to a vitamin mixture known as a premix. Beverage companies purchase this batched multi-nutrient formula for pennies per serving to enrich their product with the ingredients needed to market the functional benefits they suggest their product provides. Within weeks, this ascorbic acid shows up in beverages on shelves in your local convenience store.
Plant-Based Vitamin C’s Story
In contrast to the story of industrial ascorbic acid, natural whole vitamin C begins its life in, say, camu-camu, a rainforest berry thought to contain the highest concentration of vitamin C of any fruit. As it develops, the young berry creates vitamin C through an enzymatic process along with dozens of other beneficial compounds called phytochemicals – these extra nutrients may be the key to optimized functionality of the target vitamin. When the berry is picked and juiced, the co-factors, fiber, minerals and soluble nutrients accompany the natural ascorbic acid in a ratio that closely resembles their composition in the whole fruit. When added to a beverage, this juice delivers all of the components that make up complex, whole vitamin C.