It might feel like a distant memory now, but the Covid-19 pandemic has had a lasting impact on our lives in countless ways. For one, it has resulted in a reinvigorated focus on what we put in our bodies. In fact, for Kavita Karnik, global head of nutrition, regulatory and scientific affairs at global F&B company Tate & Lyle, there was a before and after Covid when it comes to consumers’ attitude towards food. Prior to 2020, she had noticed a growing movement, particularly among young people, to take control of their health and play an active role in improving it, looking to food not just for basic nutrition, but also to provide health benefits. But since Covid, she witnessed that trend hit the fast track. “There was a hockey stick increase in people’s desire to use food as a tool to improve their health – or ‘food as medicine’ – and the trend has really kicked off since then,” she says.

“It started off with immunity, but as the panic decreased around the immediate infection risk, it started to move towards how to maintain a healthy state for as long as possible. Consumers also started paying more attention to the nuances of functional ingredients, for example, the knock-on impacts improving your gut health can have on cardiovascular and brain health.”

Alon Chen, CEO and co-founder of Tastewise, a generative AI platform that helps food brands predict and respond to the latest trends, has also noticed exponential growth in consumers’ focus on holistic health and healthy eating. “We’ve seen interest in aspects like ‘immune system support’ rising over 150% year-on-year in social media discussion, and trends like hydration, energy and heart health seeing over 50% increase in interest across restaurant menus and social discussions in the last year,” he says.

“In the wake of the pandemic, a lot of us re-evaluated our relationship with our health and our approach to it. That, combined with the ever-growing wealth of knowledge becoming more accessible on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram has led to consumers understanding the importance of a holistic approach to health. As a result, they’re seeking new ways to improve their health through their food choices – and they are doing it from a place of sophistication and specificity.”

Weight management and gut health

At Tate & Lyle, this has translated into two key areas of focus: functional ingredients for weight management and gut health.

“On the weight management front, we have a large portfolio of sweeteners, from stevia to monk fruit to sucralose and allulose, and our nutrition team works on research, including their safety and efficacy in different age groups and the very nuanced differences between them when it comes to managing blood glucose response and how they act when combined with other carbohydrates like sugar,” Karnik explains.

The field of digestive health has also become much more nuanced in recent years. “We’ve moved on from just talking about fibres. Now consumers understand different types of fibres. They understand not just probiotics and prebiotics but also post-biotics. They are also starting to understand more about what makes a healthy microbiota and how it impacts our health more broadly,” Karnik says.

“Gut health is one umbrella we work under, but it’s much broader than digestive health. We look at gut health leading to brain health, to metabolic health, to cardiovascular health. Any improvement in gut health is not just about tackling regularity or constipation – we have gone way beyond that. Our research team is also exploring the synergistic effects of different fibres.”

Taste: the ultimate driver

Functionality alone, however, is far from enough to get a functional ingredient into a product, onto the shelves and into consumers’ homes. “Taste must always be the ultimate driver,” Karnik stresses. “Ask any dietitian and they’ll tell you that if it doesn’t taste good, compliance will drop.”

For this reason, it’s important for nutrition, regulatory, applications and R&D teams to work closely together to ensure that functional products not only offer the health benefits consumers are increasingly demanding, but are also compliant with regulations, and, above all, tasty.

“Our applications teams are both scientists and artists,” Karnik stresses. Say you were creating a healthier version of a confectionery. It’s not just a case of removing sugar and replacing it with a sweetener. Sucralose, for example, is 600 times sweeter than sugar, so you can’t simply remove 20g of sugar and replace it with less than a gram of sucralose. What happens to the remaining 19g?

“Sugar does more than just sweetening; it affects browning, preservation, texture and freezing points, especially in products like ice cream. When reducing sugar, all these factors need to be carefully balanced,” Karnik explains. “Consumers need to understand that it’s a complex science, not just a matter of swapping in a sweetener. And ultimately, it still has to taste good.”

Other factors to take into account include cost, shelf life, texture and mouthfeel. “Sweeteners are more expensive than sugar in certain applications. On top of that, customers often come to us with specific health or nutritional content claims they want to make. We need to meet those requirements before the product can be presented to the customer,” she adds.

Then there’s the regulatory part of the picture, where Karnik’s team comes in. “If it’s a brand-new ingredient, you have to convince regulators of safety and efficacy and that it’s worth putting it out there as a novel food,” she says. “That is a multi-year and – quite rightly – a highly scrutinised process. Consumers can take comfort in knowing that if it’s been approved by regulators in a certain market, it’s gone through serious scrutiny.”

Are regulations keeping up?

While compliance poses a challenge for ingredient companies, it’s a two-way street. Regulators are also struggling to keep pace with the rapid development of new ingredients and formulation methods, such as precision fermentation, a biotechnological process where microorganisms are engineered to produce specific proteins or compounds.

“With all of this new technology development, regulators have to think about how they are going to test and evolve their frameworks and assessment processes to assess safety and efficacy,” Karnik notes. “The technology needs to be developed and established first before regulators can catch up.”

For ingredients companies like Tate & Lyle, the focus is on keeping communications channels with regulators open. And that dialogue is helping. “[Regulators] are much quicker to react to technology development, although of course there is a huge discrepancy between regions like Europe and America and emerging markets,” Karnik says.

According to food science consultant Bryan Quoc Le, however, some ingredients and formulations do fall through the net.

“I think one of the big blind spots right [in the US] now, which needs more attention, is the legalisation of cannabis products. Unfortunately, there are a lot of loopholes, and different states are trying to close them. But there are still several aspects that remain unclear,” he explains.

For example, say a product claims to contain hemp extract. Technically, if you concentrate the hemp extract, you can derive THC and other cannabinoids from it. But companies don’t necessarily have to disclose that. This allows them to include the extract in beverages, for instance, without explicitly stating that it contains THC.

“This creates a kind of grey market. It’s a disservice to many businesses because, at some point, those loopholes will be closed. Right now, it’s almost like a gold rush. Companies are making bioactive products with psychological effects, but all they have to claim is that they contain hemp extract.

“That’s a regulation that really needs to be updated. If consumers don’t fully understand it, they could be harmed or affected. It’s a big issue, because people might take these ingredients thinking they’re safe or functional, but that’s not always the case,” he says.

The future is personalised

For both Chen and Karnik, the next big thing to watch out for in the functional ingredient sphere is personalised nutrition – both from a technological and ingredient perspective. At TasteWise, Chen is working on refining their platform to get food to the personalisation era. “From the messaging to the product, we want to essentially redefine the way food and beverage companies create products and the relationship between the consumers and the product,” he notes.

From an ingredient perspective, Karnik is most excited about looking at functional ingredients that address the needs of a group of individuals or a certain type of genetic make-up. “That trend is really knocking on our door,” she says. “Last year, we did a piece of work on what personalised nutrition would mean for a company like ours, where we don’t sell directly to consumers. We explored consumer segmentation and found it fascinating to look at personalisation almost like a ‘dress size’ approach — not prescribing diets based on genetic material, but offering cost-effective, but still impactful personalisation. There’s a whole area to explore based on consumer characteristics, whether by age, health goals, race or even genetic make-up.”

As we move into the future, the intersection of technology, science and consumer demand will continue to shape how we approach food – not just as sustenance, but as a personalised tool for health and wellness, with functional ingredients playing a pivotal role in addressing individual health needs and goals.

Functional ingredient trends of the moment

Healthier chocolate

Luker Chocolate observed a significant shift in consumer demand towards products that provide indulgence but also offer health benefits. In response, it developed a range of functional chocolate products, including its 44% Dark Chocolate with Protein, which is plant-based, gluten-free and non-GMO. This product, formulated with pea protein, provides 5g of protein per 25g serving.

Plant-based seasonings

Alon Chen, CEO and co-founder of TasteWise, has noticed that consumers are often interested in making small changes to their diets with maximum impact. Examples he points to include plant-based seasonings and flavorings with health benefits like black lime, catechin, Celtic sea salt and others.

Alternative indulgences

Tastewise has also found that consumers want ways to be indulgent, without the health impact. In the company’s 2024 trend report, it predicted a rise in cottage cheese as a late-night alternative to more indulgent desserts and, looking forward, it expects to see a continued rise in Greek yoghurt and other fermented dairies.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms, particularly varieties like reishi, lion’s mane and chaga, are gaining popularity in the functional food space due to their adaptogenic properties, which help the body manage stress. As consumers increasingly seek natural solutions for mental clarity, energy and resilience, adaptogens like mushrooms are beginning to feature in everything from coffee blends to nutritional supplements.

What are food enzymes and what are they used for?

Enzymes are naturally occurring proteins that enhance biochemical reactions. They can be obtained by extraction from plants or animals or by fermentation from microorganisms. They are normally added to perform a technological function in the manufacture, processing, preparation and treatment of a wide range of foods.

Food enzymes (FE) are mainly used in the baking industry, for manufacturing fruit juices, in wine making and brewing as well as in cheese manufacturing. An important field of application in terms of volumes is starch conversion to yield ingredients for foodstuff. In food production, food enzymes have a couple of advantages:

  • They can be used as alternatives to traditional chemical-based technology and can replace synthetic chemicals in many processes. Such uses can improve the environmental performance of production processes, through lower energy consumption and biodegradability.
  • They are more specific in their action than synthetic chemicals. Therefore, processes that utilise enzymes have fewer side reactions and waste by-products, resulting in higher-quality purified products.