News from 

What the beverage industry has to come up with

 

(beveragemanager.net) - Adiposity or obesity is a phenomenon of our modern civil society based on the fact that the increased prosperity after WW II has led to an exuberance rather detrimental to the health of the citizens of the various countries. Looking solely at the thirty three OECD nations, we see that in half of these nations an alarming number of residents are obese.

In these statistics the United States is undisputedly at the top with 30.6 percent, followed by Mexico with 24.2 percent and the United Kingdom with 22.4 percent. The nations with the lowest obesity rates are Japan with 3.6 percent and South Korea with an encouraging 3.2. percent.

Besides the lack of exercise, unhealthy diet is the reason for this increase in obesity to which the beverage industry has contributed a significant share as well. And particularly this industry sector has invested billions in the recent years in the development of beverages that would stop this trend or even reverse it. In all of this discussion, the key aspect at the top of the agenda is taste or relish respectively. Creating merely health-oriented food and beverage is not enough. Consumers around the world will accept only products that also taste good.

Water at the top

The most healthy beverage is undisputedly water as long as it is pure and clean. However, here the aspect mentioned above comes into play, namely taste. For this reason, great effort has been taken worldwide to add taste to water. One result constitutes the emergence of so-called near-waters that are enriched with flavors from exotic fruits and the like. A pioneer in this development is the American Coca-Cola Company with its broad range of flavors including elderberry flower, mango, etc. Another brand from the Atlanta-based market leader is Glaceau, the so-called vitamin water. Coca-Cola leads the market in this segment and demonstrates once again its competence as the largest and most innovative supplier of non-alcoholic beverages. Strong competitors also from the US are Hansen Natural Company and Jones Soda that also score in the market with “vitamin waters”. Near-waters as mentioned above, i. e. fruit flavored mineral waters, are marketed worldwide by the US company Skinny Water under the same brand name.

Pure fruit

Consumers who don’t like water very much despite its undoubted health supporting effect find an alternative in pure fruit juices. In the past few years, so-called smoothies have taken over the shelves at retailers all around the world. The inventor and market leader in this category is said to be the British company Innocent founded by two college graduates who wanted to promote the consumption of fruit by liquefying it. Today, smoothies can be found in the product line of almost every company involved in fruit juices. While these beverages meet the “fruit – five times a day” recommendation, they are also relatively high in calories. Another brand muscling into this international market is Sweetbird which, with its unique and whimsical brand image, communicates nature-based “joi de vivre” and health.

But not only “drinkable fruit” fulfills the high health requirements. Conventional fruit juices score high as well with health promoting concentrates such as the pomegranate, for example, which, based on its high vitamin content, is considered the healthiest fruit in the world. Pomegranate, acerola or similar “vitamin bombs” can nowadays be found in the product line of many producers around the globe.

Tea-based

From time immemorial, tea has been considered a health promoting beverage with exotic teas such as green and white teas leading the way. This trend was adopted by the international beverage industry to introduce ice teas to the market that comply with the lofty health claim in the cold drink segment. Here, the brand Lipton from the globally active Unilever Corporation is regarded as the market leader worldwide. While flavored black teas were used initially, the market has diversified considerably in that today the health aspect is attained through the type of tea used. By now, all suppliers have relinquished sugar as a sweetener which also enabled the reduction of the energy content to almost zero. And today as in the past, Lipton is deemed to be the key innovator even with brands of other corporations emerging on the market such as Nestea from Nestlé, for example.

Another product category that has been cultivated in China for over two thousand years is kombucha. Its health promoting effect that equally affects body and mind has been marketed in Europe for about ten years and internationally as a brand-name product and thus made accessible to the public at large. The kombucha pioneer is said to be the Austrian company Carpe Diem, an affiliate of the globally active Red Bull Company. Today, other products based on the original kombucha recipe are available at retailers worldwide. They combine the effect of kombucha with flavors such as cranberry or quince and are thus positioned for a broader consumer group. In the meantime, the fermented tea beverage from China is also available as a carbonated drink to give it a refreshing taste.

However, while beverages such as water, tea or fruit juices are generally considered healthy, food technologists worldwide have long been working on creating beverages that will restore health. Leading the way here is the world’s largest food producer Nestlé which, under the brand name Boost has products on the market that balance certain dietary deficiencies and closely approximate medical applications. These include among others Boost Glucose Control and Boost High Protein. With this segment Nestlé once again secured its innovation leadership and complies with its claim and responsibility as a global market leader.

The variety of healthy beverages described above demonstrates quite impressively that besides taste the health aspect is increasingly gaining in popularity. This circumstance is attributable to the many years of “misdevelopments” precisely these companies contributed to and created over the past years and decades. In contrast to medicine, however, a trend to a balanced combination of health and taste is clearly noticeable. Only this way will it be possible to effectively counteract the health and economy mistakes made in the past. (rl/bmg)