Forever young by using food as your medicine

Why health is a top concern for consumers?

Health has always been a concern for consumers, especially when it comes to making choices on food & beverage products. With the global pandemic of Covid-19 currently spreading across the globe, the topic of health is even more a top of mind concern for consumers than it was before. They look for naturally functional foods that help them boost their immune system as well as their overall health.

What is "Forever Young" all about?

What the forever young trend emphasizes is that the health movement has been evolving over time. How we see it in 2020 and beyond is as a surge to live better, longer and stronger. It is about leading a healthy lifestyle focusing on prevention rather than cure. 40% of consumers globally adopted a more proactive approach towards health to ensure they stay fit and active until as late in life as possible (FMCG Gurus). Functional and fortified food & beverage products targeting a wide range of health topics such as gut health, skin or eye health or also the immune system are gaining traction. 51% of consumers globally state that they get the vitamins and nutrients they need from foods rather than taking supplements (FMCG Gurus).

Functional food is also a go-to-source to enhance your looks or when you want to step out of your daily routine and relax.

We recognize the following three sub-trends of “forever young”:

• Food as medicine:

  It is not enough for consumers to know the food they consume is simply healthy; they want to know exactly what the added benefit to their health is. Functional and fortified food and beverage products targeting special health needs are therefore booming. 9 in 10 consumers globally believe certain foods, beverages, and ingredients have medicinal benefits. This is still growing with nearly half of consumers claiming this belief has become stronger over the last two years (HealthFocus International).

• Eat for beauty:

  Is it a food, a supplement or a beauty product? The lines between these categories start to blur. Ingredients already well known in beauty or supplements find their way into food and beverage products (e.g. collagen or hyaluronic acid).

• De-stress:

  Always connected and running from one appointment to the next. With today’s busy lifestyles consumers long for moments of relaxation to not only take care of their body, but also their mind and improve their sleeping quality. With the current Covid-19 situation, many of us of course experience a totally different lifestyle now. Instead of appointments and meetings, we stay a lot at home and need to find ways how to relax in a totally new and often stressful situation.

How food as medicine can help us now?

A central health aspect currently in spotlight is our immune system and how to strengthen immunity. 67% of consumers globally link immunity to their overall health (FMCG Gurus). Also concerning this topic, the current Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the interest among consumers. This can be seen by growth rates of more than 300% in search terms like “food to make immune system strong” or synonyms on Google over the last weeks.

Fermented foods and specifically yogurt with the included probiotics are well-known products supporting gut health, but also to boost the overall wellbeing. Recent studies are proposing that around 70% of the immune system lives in the gut. Yogurt ranks at the top of the most recognized fermented products.