From Green Tea To Turmeric, Food Companies Innovate To Integrate Ingredients With Health Claims

By Brenda Van Goethem, Nerac Analyst

People today seem to be looking for more convenient and natural ways to maintain or improve their health. Food companies are responding by bringing to market ever-increasing numbers of new functional food products—and re-labeling and repositioning existing products—to emphasize that scientifically validated, healthy ingredients are contained within.

One of the hottest ingredients comes from green tea, which is finding its way into all kinds of new products from beverages to dairy products to candy. Green tea is just not simply a type of tea you can sip on—it is certainly one of the most beloved flavors in Asian culture. In Japan, for example, the green tea flavor seems to be everywhere in candy, bakery goods, and yes, in tea. In Hawaii, many restaurants offer green tea ice cream, and you can’t pass a shaved ice stand that doesn’t offer a green tea flavoring. Starbucks started mainstreaming this flavor into the U.S. market by launching green tea frappucino frappuccino® in 2006. (actually I couldn’t find a frapp on their website but they do show a green tea latte)

Can Green Tea Do It All?
Green tea is widely touted for health benefits associated with its antioxidant properties. Scientific studies have demonstrated that green tea consumption lowers cancers risks, can act as an anti-inflammatory agent, can lower blood pressure, and decrease risk of strokes. In addition to its antioxidant properties, green tea has been looked to for weight control, with clinical studies showing that ingesting green tea with high catechins leads to reduced body fat, decreased blood pressure, and decreased LDL cholesterol.

Now, the pleasant-tasting tea is gaining popularity with U.S. food companies. A Mintel GNPD survey shows that 112 products containing green tea were launched in the U.S. over the last six months. Of course, teas and ready-to-drink iced teas top this new product list, but they are only part of a wide variety of products that includes cookies, yogurt, and gum. Last month, Fendall’s Ice Cream launched its new green tea-flavored ice cream. Hershey now offers antioxidants, vitamin C, and green tea in its Ice Breakers Lift Your Spirit gum. The three top companies that launched the most number of products containing green tea included retailer Target, under its Archer farms grocery label, Unilever in the beverages category, and Whitewave Foods in the dairy category.

Boosting Health Claims In Familiar Brands
Another market trend is the re-positioning of nutritious foods to make them more appealing to consumers. This re-positioning usually involves scientific evidence to support a claim for improved health. For example, products that actively promote heart health, such as the oat bran in Cheerios, or digestive health, as in Danon Dannon™ yogurt, have been particularly popular. Dole has recently launched “Wildly Nutritious,” which are touted as fruit blends with the perfect combination of vitamins and minerals to help you stay healthy. Dole offers three blends: tropical fruit for immunity, mixed fruit for heart health, and mixed berries for an antioxidant blend.

General Mills’ Green Giant brand just started promoting its new Health Blends vegetables as the first of their kind in the frozen vegetable category to incorporate a health trend. Healthy Weight is a “satiety-enhancing” blend of sliced carrots, sugar snap peas, black beans and edamame lightly tossed with butter sauce. Healthy Vision as is an “antioxidant rich” blend of sliced carrots, zucchini quarters and green beans lightly tossed with rosemary butter sauce. Immunity Boost is a blend of broccoli florets, julienne carrots, and red and green sweet pepper slices in a garlic-herb infused, extra-virgin olive oil seasoning.

Spicing Up Antioxidant Claims
The next hot ingredient up for repositioning in the U.S. food market looks to be the antioxidant spice turmeric. According to a Mintel GNPD presentation on emerging flavor trends given at IFT Annual Meeting & Food Expo this summer, there is a growing interest in the U.S. for ethnic flavors, including curry, whose key component is turmeric.

Turmeric, a bright yellow spice from the plant Curcuma longa, has been used for centuries in both Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine to treat aches, pains, wounds, sprains, liver disorders, and a wide variety of diseases of the epidermal, pulmonary, and gastrointestinal systems. Extensive research over the last half century has shown that curcumin, a tumeric component, exhibits antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, and anticancer activities and thus has the potential to act against various malignant diseases, diabetes, allergies, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, and other chronic illnesses.

Curry and turmeric may have a wide appeal in the US market as it offers a versatile, multi-ethnic flavor profile, appearing not only in Indian cuisine, but also Thai, Chinese, and other cuisines. According to Mintel GNPD, 172 new food products with curry or turmeric were launched in the U.S. in the last 12 months, with 57 percent of them in the form of prepared meals, such as Wegman’s Thai Style-Green Curry Shrimp, or seasonings, such as Masa’s Gourmet Curry Coconut Sauce. Watkins and Target, under the Archer Farms label, launched the most products containing turmeric or a curry flavoring.

One of the more novel products introduced in May 2007 was the Vosges Haut-Chocolat ice cream flavor of Naga, which consists of sweet Indian curry and fresh young coconut.

To give consumers what they want, the food industry continues to innovate with new functional ingredients. However, the industry is coupling product innovation with scientific evidence and market ingenuity to make old nutritional mainstays, such as vegetables, “fresh” in the eyes of the consumer.