Multifunctionality in the Nutrition Industry

First published in Nutrition Insight.

In this podcast, Fonterra's lead nutritionist Dr Kera Nyemb-Diop speaks with Nutrition Insight’s William Bradford Nichols on Nutiani and the latest iteration of our Global State of Health and Wellbeing report series. Findings in the report include growing consumer interest in the “interconnectedness” of health and the consumer push for products that support holistic well-being. 

The first study has found that health and wellbeing are a top priority for consumers across the globe, and that most consumers view health holistically, which makes me really happy as a nutritionist. They are taking actions to optimize their day-to-day health and wellbeing, and that 88% consumers believe nutrition is a key enabler for good health.

For the second report, one of the key takeaways helped us understand that there are five main types of consumers with very distinct concerns, challenges, and, and motivations. We call them Proactive Pursuers, Balanced Seekers, Practical Worriers, Activity Seekers, and Relaxed Cosmopolitans. They help the industry identify the specific priorities of health and wellbeing for consumers and better understand their values and habits when it comes to managing their health and wellbeing. With a deeper understanding of the motivation and attitudes, brands can better tailor their product to appeal to consumers and better support their wellbeing goals.

Because there is a growing understanding of interconnected health, consumers are seeing the value of multifunctional solution that can address more than one health concern for a single product. So, when consumer evaluates nutrition products and with a rising cost of living, they pay attention to that. 

To help our customers answer these multi-functionality demand, Nutiani offers a range of multifunctional ingredients such as probiotics and phospholipids. Nutiani HN001™ and Nutiani HN019™ are our probiotics strains to boost both immune health and gut health and has all been proven to support the management of depression and anxiety. Recently, we have also been focusing on our phospholipids. They can help reduce day-to-day stress symptoms, improve mental and cognitive health. Beside reducing stress, consumption together with exercise has been found to promote muscle health.

Our probiotics strains Nutiani HN001™ and Nutiani HN019™ are one of the most studied and reputable strains with more than 140 publications and 30 human clinical trials for the former and over 125 publications and over 30 human clinical trials for the latter.

For phospholipids, we started research doing some research back in 1988, so we now have a wealth of scientific evidence proving a broad range of health benefits. Very recently we conducted a project which is called EMPOWER, which means employing milk phospholipid to observe wellbeing emotional resiliency and it found that taking our phospholipids improves stress response in day-to-day for consumers.

90% of consumers adopt a holistic mindset towards good health and so it's one area of help that can have a ripple effect on their overall wellbeing. The same consumer wellness research found that 88% believe that well-balanced diets are crucial, but yet only 50% are actively able to manage their wellness, their wellbeing through a healthy diet.

In the segmentation research, we identified that Practical Worriers, which is one of the groups, were identified as feeling the guiltiest about eating unhealthily. Especially they find it difficult to stick to a meal plan or healthy diet. These gaps between consumer values and action are where brand can best engage with consumers because it's dealing with their pain points. 

First, we have Proactive Pursuers. They are the largest and most highly engaged of the segments. They prefer less processed products with added functional benefits, and they also value reliable science-based information. Then we have Balanced Seekers, which are 22% of global consumers. They're generally happy with health and nutrition, though they recognize that there are factors beyond their control. Whereas the Practical Worriers, they're the most concerned about the health, but they're not as proactive in health management as other groups. Sometimes they feel guilty about the nutrition, but they're not often enabled to invest time and money to their wellbeing. We have Relaxed Cosmopolitans, 16% of our global consumers - they are the busy ones and often do not have time to stick to a diet regime. High volume of information on health is overwhelming and they prefer eating natural and unprocessed food. The last one are the Activity Seekers, 14% of the global consumers. Exercise is the main way that Activity Seekers manage their health and wellbeing. They're still open to trying innovation or novelty supplements and foods.

All these segments believe health is holistic to varying degrees. Of course, the Proactive Pursuers, the first group I mentioned before, are the forefront of these belief. But different consumer segments, they're going to approach the health issues with different methods.

For instance, we're going to engage with Proactive Pursuers that value reliable science-based information because we have clinically proven ingredient that can help customers make a substantiated health plan and build trust with them. But, for example, Balanced Seekers, they prefer value for money products, and Nutiani’s multifunctional ingredients can help meet their needs and demand in a single product. 

At Nutiani, we believe nutrition has the potential to make our lives longer, more fulfilling and healthier. We’re really focusing on providing solution that answer the needs of active consumers and patients across adult life stages for physical, mental, and inner wellbeing. We are a B2B brand that offers end-to-end solutions for a combination of health and wellbeing products, concepts and services.

We accelerate brand innovation pipelines to meet evolving consumer needs and capture demand. We also help develop science-backed products as our portfolio of clinically proven ingredients such as our probiotics, phospholipids and lactoferrin. At the same time, we offer ready to market products that have been consumer tested with Kantar, an independent research agency so our customers can adapt to or adapt directly, allowing them to achieve their business goals quicker. We also provide experts services where we bring our proprietary research consumer research, scientific expertise, and technical know-how to support customer along their innovation journey. Our methodology and extensive knowledge are derived from our long-lasting heritage with the Fonterra brand.