Functional ingredients, collaborative products further blur the line between food and medicine in 2024

Whatever you think of the changes in the food and beverage industries — and the world — over the past 12 months, we can probably agree on one thing: Meeting consumer demand in a post-pandemic marketplace has been anything but easy. Good thing that marketplace is jam-packed with geniuses.

Even geniuses, however, need a potent combination of luck and legwork to predict where customers will be five minutes from now, let alone next quarter. And tracking the trends in this, the age of social media, can feel like trying to create a potato chip with the culinary experience of a nice clam chowder: Without expert guidance, you could simply end up with a soggy spud that smells strangely of fish.

That’s where those geniuses come in. Right now, collaborative products are tapping into shared creativity across the industry, while functional beverages continue addressing health-conscious demands and the ever-blurring lines between food and medicine keep reshaping how we think about what we eat. Together, these trends can offer a roadmap through chaos. So, pay attention. Your next product development cycle may depend upon it.

Collaborative products, branded ingredients

You’ve likely heard all about big-name collaborations like Oreo and Coca-Cola, which joined forces this year to create cookies that bubble on your tongue like soda (thanks to a generous application of popping candy in the crème). Another example is XPO NRG, a functional beverage that debuted at SupplySide West 2024, which was created through a collaboration between various industry players and contains quite a few branded ingredients, including Zembrin from PLT Health Solutions.

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“Functional beverages are among the hottest trends in health and wellness,” Steve Fink, VP of marketing at PLT Health Solutions, said. “And one of the most exciting developments in this space is the rise of branded ingredients on beverage labels. These science-backed ingredients serve as a promise of quality and efficacy, helping to build trust and differentiate products in an increasingly competitive market.”

Alan Reed, executive director of Chicagoland Food and Beverage Network (CFBN) and Bigger Table, agreed that collaboration is a critical path forward in the food and beverage sectors. In fact, that’s the whole point behind CFBN and Bigger Table. These two organizations prove that inter-industry collaborations can be more than just a marketing strategy, working with food companies to ensure ingredients that might have otherwise gone to waste gain new life in products developed to feed underserved neighborhoods in Chicago.

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“[We ask,] ‘Who are the five companies that we think might be able to donate an ingredient?’” Reed said about the process of inter-industry collaboration. “And then we reach out … And if we can't get those ingredients, we reformulate while still making it healthy and nutritious and taste good. It’s the hardest work I've ever done in my whole life, but it's also the most rewarding.”

Functional beverages continue to boom — and so do their effects

When it comes to the beverage preferences of the modern consumer, the more functional it is, the better. And that means moving beyond caffeine and even caffeine-adjacent compounds like paraxanthine — we’re talking about nootropics, adaptogens and other multisyllabic tongue-twister ingredients. Anything that provides a tangible benefit to the person drinking it.

“It's already in energy drinks, and we've seen it in sports beverages,” Jeremy Appleton, director of medical and scientific affairs at PLT Health Solutions, said about his company’s branded ingredient, Zynamite S, which won the people’s choice award at this year’s Food & Beverage Ingredient Idol. “[It’s] a trend that we're seeing, where these two types of beverages are merging. The lines are getting blurrier because people want both.”

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With more branded ingredients offering a wider variety of functional benefits than ever, it’s no surprise that the lines between beverages and supplements continue to blur. And as food starts to look more like medicine, consumer concerns about safety and efficacy are sure to arise.

The line between food, medicine only gets blurrier

As more brands seek to close gaps in their supply chains and reduce waste, collaborative products containing branded ingredients may become the way of the future. And functional beverages are certainly the way of today, offering much more than basic hydration. But are those ingredients safe to add to foods, where customers might not know exactly what to look for on a label or what to expect from the effects?

Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), has promised to end the corruption at FDA and “Make America Healthy Again” by increasing scrutiny of said ingredients while clearing paths to market for controversial drugs.

“FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Kennedy said in a post on X. “This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.”

And yet some signs point to a continuation of previous Trump policies, and with various food and supplement organizations cautiously supporting RFK Jr., we may begin to see new opportunities for unique applications of functional ingredients in food and beverage. And one of the technologies he mentioned in that social post — chelating compounds — might offer a promising path forward for ensuring functional ingredients can deliver on the benefits they promise.

“The chelating process is having that amino acid bound to the mineral in two positions,” Bob Finn said. He’s director of research and development at Innophos, which offers chelated mineral products through a process called Chelamax. “So, if it's bound in more than one position, you form a ring structure, and that ring structure adds stability to the overall compound … so that when it reaches the small intestinal area, where absorption occurs, it's still bio-accessible and available for absorption.”