n ew n utrition business · n ew n utrition volume 10 number 9 july 2005 issn 1464-3308 page 9...

B U S I N E S S

T H E J O U R N A L F O R H E A LT H Y E AT I N G , F U N C T I O N A L F O O D S & N U T R A C E U T I C A L S

Yoplait uses dairy toovercome soy taste barrier

N E W N U T R I T I O N

JULY 2005 ISSN 1464-3308VOLUME 10 NUMBER 9

Page 9

www.new–nutrition.com

Spanish dairy leadsworld in omega-3

Page 23 9

Nestlé offersslendernessfrom calcium

Healthy mothersare the new

nutrition strategy

Continues on page 4

The market for soy protein looks set to takeon a whole new direction with the launch byYoplait in France of a dairy yoghurt made withSolae soy protein and carrying the Solaeingredient brand – and the possibility that theconcept will soon appear under the Yoplaitbrand in one of the 60 countries elsewhere inthe world where the Yoplait brand is marketed.Once viewed as a rival to dairy, soy is aningredient that could potentially help dairyproducts differentiate themselves in anincreasingly tough market, while dairy couldhelp mainstream the health benefits of aprotein that is still largely confined to a health-conscious niche of consumers.

“Mexico, Australia, Korea, Canada,England and Israel – these are the countriesthat are the most keen,” Lucien Fa, President ofSodiaal, owner of the Yoplait brand worldwide,told New Nutrition Business in an interview, addingthat he believes that soy and dairy combinationshave a high position on the innovation plans ofmany fresh dairy product companies. Yoplait’slaunch of its Bioplait brand in France comes inparallel with the launch of another soy productby Danone after two years of successfulmarketing in Spain.

Yoplait chose as its soy protein supplier theSolae Company, and Bioplait carries the Solaebranded ingredient logo prominently on-pack.“Solae and Yoplait are going into partnershipover and above a normal supply agreement,”says Fa, adding: “We have worked with Solae toobtain the molecule of soy protein that gives usthe best balance between quality of soy proteinand taste and they have been able to supply us

with a molecule of Solae which is exclusive tous.”

Yoplait’s goal in launching Bioplait – adairy yoghurt that delivers 2.9g of Solae soyprotein in each 115g pot – is to capitalize onconsumers’ growing interest in consuminghealthy proteins, such as soy and theirreluctance to eat soy products which areperceived as bad-tasting.

“Soy is one of the fastest-growingcategories in France and the UK,”

explains Stephane Dalyac, Yoplait’s Director ofMarketing, “and people are aware of thegeneral health benefits, although they are notnecessarily aware of the specifics. But they haveone key barrier with soy – they think that ittastes awful,” and as a result Yoplait is focusingon a good-tasting way to consume soy as its key

selling point. Yoplait is also planning tocapitalize on the awareness of soy that has beenbuilt up by increasing media attention and the

marketing activity of soy foods companies,notably Triballat-Noyal, a small dairycompany whose 100% soy products, sold

under the Sojasun brand, are the marketleader in the soy category in France – in ready

meals and other sectors as well as dairysubstitutes – and have achieved 10% householdpenetration. Overall, 40% of French consumersnow claim to buy a soy product at least once ayear.

Fa describes the Sojasun products as, “awfultaste-wise. We bring our offer to grow themarket by overcoming this barrier.”

Dalyac is clear that his company will haveto work intensively to get the attention ofFrench consumers: “The role of all ourmarketing activities is to help people overcomethe taste barrier – we are doing sampling in 700of the main superstores in France on the busiestday of the week and in terms of sampling wewill have covered 25% of the key supermarketsin France by the year end.”

The sampling effort will be supported by a“substantial” advertising and marketingcampaign that will represent an investment ofmore than €6 million ($7.2 million).

Bioplait’s packaging describes the productas a source of soy protein, and remindsconsumers that eating more vegetable-sourceprotein is recommended by French governmentnutritional guidelines, explains BrigitteRousseau, Yoplait’s Director of Nutrition &Regulatory Affairs. “It also on the pot asks

By Julian Mellentin & Dale Buss

C O N T E N T S & C O N TA C T S2 JULY 2005

N E W N U T R I T I O N B U S I N E S Sw w w. n e w - n u t r i t i o n . c o m

LEAD STORY

1,4 Yoplait uses dairy to overcome soy taste barrier

NEWS ANALYSIS3,4 Omega-3 milk aims for mass-market

mums

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

5 Sweden OKs a low-GI health claim5 Crunch time for crisps6 Vital vegetables, functional fruit –

what do consumers think?7 Healthy bugs make for a healthy

mouth

U.S. NEWS

8 Chronic obesity? Who you gonna call? FatBusters!

8 We Can say Go to healthy eating says NIH

9 Healthy mothers are the new nutrition strategy

NUTRITION RESEARCH

10 Protein vs carb, low-fat vs low-glycemic load: latest findings

10 Give low-carb diets a chance says review

11 Dairy, diabetes risk and prostate cancer

12 Milk calories add weight in teen study

12 In praise of breakfast13 Dietary vitamin E may lower

Parkinson’s risk13 Vitamin B6 cuts women’s colorectal

cancer risk14 Oat bran for heart-health 14 Soy benefits blood pressure14 Raisins fight tooth decay

SOCIAL & CONSUMERRESEARCH

15 TV confuses children about which foods are healthy, says expert

15 Liquid diet giving Americans most oftheir calories

15 Future for dairy “exciting”16 Get off the scales for the sake of your

health

EDITORIAL

17 Commitment, communication and sampling key to omega-3 success

18 Another sad story from Nestlé

CASE STUDIES19 Spanish dairy leads world in

Omega-320-22 Omega-3 seeks ways out of its niche23,24 Nestlé offers slenderness from

calcium25 Nestlé’s nutrition ambitions crash in

Germany26 Danisco sets sights on probiotic

brand27 Supermarket own label is first with

daily-dose probiotic drink28,29 Naturally wholesome and healthy

makes for ready-meal success30 Instantly recognized and understood:

The Happy Tooth

INTERNATIONAL NEWPRODUCT LAUNCHES31-34 Healthy eating new products in

the US and rest of world

IMPORTANT NOTICE35 A polite reminder to our subscribers

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Arla Food Ingredients . . . . . .30Banat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30Bauer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22Biogaia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7Cadbury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30Cargill-Cerestar . . . . . . . . . . .30Cerealia Foods and Breads . . . .5Chuppa Chups . . . . . . . . . . . .30Dairy Crest . . . . . . . . . . . .3,4,17Dairy Farmers . . . . . . . . . . . . .20Danisco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26,27

Danone . . . . . .4,17,18,23,25,27Dawn Foods . . . . . .3,4,17,21,22DSM Nutritionals . . . . . . . . . .3Emmi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18Fan Milk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26Fonterra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26Fresh and Wild Organic . . . . .29George Weston Foods . . . .17,20General Mills . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4Get Real . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28,29Harris Teeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28

Holland & Barrett . . . . . . . . .29Kerry Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21Leche Pascual . . . . . . . . . . . . .19Lecheria Astariana . . . . . . . . .19Ljubljanske Mlekarne . . . . . .26Marks & Spencer . . . . . . .26,27Muller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18,23Nestle . . . . . . . . . . . .18,23,24,25Oral-B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30Palatinit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30Perfetti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

Peter Brownes . . . . . . . . . . . . .20Pringles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5Puleva Biotech . . . . . . . . . .3,19Puleva Foods . . . . . . . . .17,19,22Rasio Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5Roquette Freres . . . . . . . . . . . .30Ross Laboratories . . . . . . . . . . .9Safeway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28Sainsburys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29Savvy Faire Lifestyle Cuisine .28Schneekoppe . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

Solae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4Soprole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26Triballat-Noyal . . . . . . . . . . . . .1Waitrose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29Walkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5Woolworths . . . . . . . . . . . .26,27Wrigley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30Yakult Honsha . . . . . . . . . .23,27Yoplait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1,4

N E W S A N A LY S I SJULY 2005 3


A major UK dairy group is hoping thatgrowing consumer awareness of omega-3, andin particular the media attention to its benefitsfor children’s learning skills in the wake of therecently-published Durham Study, will focusthe minds of British mothers on a newly-launched omega-3 fresh milk, the first productof its kind on the UK market and only thesecond omega-3 fresh milk launched inEurope.

June saw UK supermarkets take their firstdeliveries of St. Ivel advance, the brand namegiven by Dairy Crest to its omega-3 liquidmilk, available in whole milk and half-fatvarieties. A 250ml serve delivers 113mg and63mg, respectively, of EPA/DHA – roughlycomparable to omega-3 milks on the market inother countries (see table on page 22), althoughless than the only omega-3 milk that has so farbecome mass market, the Puleva brand ofUHT milk in Spain (see case study on page21).

Dairy Crest says it is targeting its brand –St. Ivel is one of the oldest and best-knownbrands in the chiller cabinet in the UK – at themass-market. The company’s positioning ofthe brand and its planned marketing effortsshow that it is applying the lessons that havebeen learnt in other markets, notably inIreland (see pages 20-22).

“St. Ivel advance is primarily targeted atmums with children aged 1 to 11 who viewnutrition as important to their children’sdevelopment,” Dairy Crest told New Nutrition

Business in an e-mailed reply to our questions.In the email, in support of its marketingmessage, Dairy Crest specifically cited theDurham Study, which has attracted attentionworldwide for its findings in relation to omega-3 consumption and improved learning andconcentration in children, and whose findings,the company says, “cannot be dismissed by themedical community”. The study found that ofchildren who took supplements for a minimumof three months, 40% significantly improvedtheir reading and spelling skills.

Dairy Crest says that, “Learning andconcentration benefits are at the core of theproposition and will accordingly becommunicated more than the heart-healthmessage”. To that end the front of the St. Ivelbottle carries the prominent statement that:

Omega 3 may enhance

learning

concentration

In addition, says Dairy Crest, St. Iveladvance also refers, as a secondary message, toheart-health benefits with the statement that:“As part of a healthy lifestyle Omega 3 can also help to

maintain a healthy heart.”

This latter statement reflects the heart-health claim for marine omega-3s which hasbeen approved by the UK’s Joint Health ClaimInitiative (JHCI), the industry’s own self-regulating body that approves health claims.However, the JHCI has not approved anyhealth claim linking omega-3s to enhancedlearning and concentration and while DairyCrest is under no obligation to obtain theapproval of JHCI or any other body for thisclaim, which is undoubtedly supported bysignificant science, the fact that a major dairycompany is using a claim that has not beenapproved by the JHCI underscores just howirrelevant the UK’s health claims approvalbody has become.

In the light of what Dairy Crest claims isan increased media interest in omega-3 and itsbenefits, it isn’t surprising that consumerawareness is on the rise. And, the companysays that 61% of the population has heard ofomega-3, compared to 58% three months ago.

To boost that awareness and build itsbrand the company is beginning with a majorPR effort, targeting consumer and healthcareprofessional media, using what it calls the“advance ambassadors” – a group of omega-3experts who will be communicating with keyorganizations who in turn educate consumers.The company has co-opted Dr MadeleinePortwood, Educational Psychologist andprinciple investigator of the Durham Study,Professor Philip C.Calder, Ph.D., of theUniversity of Southampton, an omega-3expert and board member of the InternationalSociety for the Study of Fatty Acids andLipids, and Dr Mark Porter, a physician who isbetter known as a writer and broadcaster, “toreally drive awareness and enhance theunderstanding of omega-3 with particularregards to the developmental benefits forchildren.”

The education effort will also be supportedwith a website www.omega3.co.uk and a highprofile advertising campaign to be launchedlater this year.

Paul Fraser, Marketing Director at DairyCrest, said in a statement issued by thecompany that: “The growing concern,reflected in recent high-profile media

campaigns, about the state of children’snutrition, provides the perfect platform for thislaunch. We feel that this is a really motivatingproduct for consumers and we will be investingheavily in the brand.”

St. Ivel advance has been almost two yearsin development. Dairy Crest declined todisclose the name of the supplier used in itsomega-3 milk, but industry sources speculatethat it’s likely to be DSM Nutritionals, whose

omega-3 is used in the Dawn Omega Milkmarketed in Ireland, which was the firstomega-3-fortified milk on the Europeanmarket. The remarkable parallels between theDairy Crest strategy and that now beingfollowed by Dawn in Ireland also suggestssome collaboration via a shared supplier.

COMMENT: MASS MARKET AMBITIONS FOR APREMIUM PRICED BRAND?

In an interesting marketing twist, Dairy Crest’scommunications refer to two 250ml glasses ofthe whole milk variant of St. Ivel advance

Omega-3 milk aims for mass-market mums

Continues on page 4

simply, ‘Do you know that 25 grams of soyprotein is good for your heart?’” says Rousseau,adding that AFFSSA, the French governmentagency which regulates health claims, in Marchthis year issued a report that recognized thatthere is a link between consuming soy protein,cholesterol reduction and heart-health.

Pricewise, Bioplait retails at the same pointper 115g pot as a 125g yoghurt pot – a typethat is common on the French market – of aleading brand, such as Danone’s Activia. On aper gram, basis Bioplait is 8%-10% moreexpensive.

Yoplait’s ingredient partner, U.S.-basedSolae, is also supplying soy protein to Yoplait’srival Group Danone for a similar soy-dairyblended yoghurt that Danone recentlylaunched in France – called Bio aux extraits desoja – sources tell New Nutrition Business.Although the protein ingredients aren’t exactlyidentical, the difference is that while Yoplait isco-branding Solae on its product packaging,Danone is using Solae-supplied protein on thetypical basis where it doesn’t identify thesupplier.

For Solae, the Bioplait deal is a huge win,an assessment that, by inference, also couldapply to its deal to supply Danone as well. “It’snot so much a volume opportunity at the outsetas it is a tremendous statement for ourcompany that companies in Europe arebringing great-tasting ingredients to market inwhich soy is the characterizing ingredient,”

Garnet Pigden, global vice-president ofstrategy and business development for Solae,tells New Nutrition Business.

“Bioplait is launching into the heart ofyoghurt consumption, which is France, andDanone has done the same,” Pigden continues.“That’s very exciting, and it’s a watershedevent.”

Among other obstacles, Pigden explains, isthat French consumers typically associate soyproducts and ingredients with the U.S., thelong-time ally about which France and theFrench people, of course, have increasingambivalence.

“It’s one of the things that makes it hardfor us to say what we think will be the volumeof sales of Bioplait,” Pigden says. “At theoutset, the volume we’ll sell into the Europeanmarket for yoghurt-based product is good, butit’s not great in the overall context of ourbusiness. But what is significant to us is thetrend in Europe toward embracing soy as ahealthy ingredient and the increasingwillingness of European companies to featuresoy.”

Pigden says that some of the difficulty ingetting to this point in the European market islingering doubt among European consumersabout any sort of soy protein because they’reconcerned about its relationships to geneticallymodified organisms (or GMs).

“They were feeling that soy wassynonymous with GMOs,” Pigden explains.

“But these days, that problem increasingly isbehind us, probably because people are seekingthe health benefits of soy and because we offerall our European consumers an option tochoose a GM soy protein or a non-GM.”

Tony Arnold, president and chief executiveofficer of Solae, attributed the Bioplaitbreakthrough to “the valuable consumerinsights we gather through intensive marketresearch and our relentless pursuit of taste andfunctional solutions for our customers.”

Pigden explains that the European launchis important to the future of Solae. “We’velooked from the beginning at Europe and othermarkets throughout the world to embrace thehealthy ingredient that soy is,” he says. “Ourstrategy is to export our success in NorthAmerica with soy in beverage and energy bars,to the rest of the world.”

For now, “the rest of the world” forBioplait, a French-engineered product, includesthe U.S.. Pigden confirms that Solae has offeredto allow General Mills to license Bioplait underthe Yoplait brand that General Mills licensesexclusively in the U.S.. In Minneapolis, aspokeswoman for General Mills tells New

Nutrition Business that the company doesn’tdisclose plans for future products.

The Solae brand already features on morethan 40 co-branded products from firms suchas Campbells and General Mills, including thelatter’s 8th Continent soy milk. This is the firsttime it will be seen on the French market.

N E W S A N A LY S I S4 JULY 2005


providing 50% of the RDI of omega-3. Infact the UK does not yet have an official“RDI” for omega-3s, although the ScientificAdvisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) ofthe Food Standards Agency has identified arecommended consumption level. This is not,however, translated into an RDI on nutritionfacts panels. Asked what its ambitions are forSt. Ivel advance Dairy Crest told New Nutrition

Business that the proposition is not niche, “it istargeted at the growing proportion of mumswho feel that nutrition is fundamentallyimportant to the development of theirchildren.” The company also said that theproduct is priced, “at a proportionately lowerpremium than many of the other omega-3enriched milks sold around the world. Thishelps to make it a more affordable option forparents.”

In fact St. Ivel advance is priced at £0.79per litre ($1.43/€1.19), putting it a hefty 40%premium to regular milk, which retails ataround £0.55 per litre ($1.00/€0.83) in Tesco,the UK’s biggest grocery chain and, accordingto the UK industry body the MilkDevelopment Council (MDC), other majorsupermarkets. It’s a price premium which – as

the table on page 22 shows – is actually similarto many omega-3 milks in other countries.With the notable exception of Spain, all theseother brands are niche and not mass-market(see case study on pages 20-24). One of the keylessons of functional foods from the last tenyears is that for brands with added ingredientsto become mass market, they almost alwayshave to sell close to or at the same price as“regular products”. The only way to overcomethe disadvantage of a high price premium is bya massive and continuous effort in marketingand consumer education over many years, asPuleva has done in Spain since 1998.

In the UK, with a population of 60million, “mass market” is a big number. Itremains to be seen whether sales of St. Iveladvance can equal those of organic milks, forexample, which are also perceived to behealthy, and whose annual sales in the UKmarket now total some £53 million ($96.2million/€80 million) according to MDC data.At that level that’s still a niche, accounting for2% of UK milk sales.

Even if St. Ivel advance sells as well on aper capita basis as the Dawn Omega Milk

brand has in Ireland (where sales 15 monthsafter launch are around £4 million – $7.3million/€6 million – in a country of 4 millionpeople), that would give sales of £60 million –and that would still be a niche rankingalongside soy milk, which also had sales of£55 million ($99.8 million/€83 million) lastyear (after ten years of marketing effort). Andto put that in context, that’s less than half thesize of the UK market for “daily-dose” typeprobiotic dairy drinks such as Actimel andYakult.

£50 million in sales, though, is still a bigniche and one that any company would behappy with. If Dairy Crest get to that levelwithin the next 15 months then they willdeserve the admiration of the industry. It willbe a remarkable achievement – after sevenyears of marketing omega-3 eggs have secureda bare 4%-5% share of the egg market, whileomega-3 products have failed or languished inniches in the bread and juice categories. Wecan only assume that, as Danone had to do tobuild its now successful Actimel brand, DairyCrest is planning to spend millions each yearand take years of losses on the new brand.

Continued from front page

Continued from page 3

I N T E R N AT I O N A L N E W SJULY 2005 5


Britain, Europe’s greatest snackingnation, appears to be curbing its passion forcrisps.

New research from Mintel has found salesof crisps and savoury snacks falling: this year,Britain is estimated to munch its way through268,000 tonnes of crisps and snacks, a fall ofas much as 12% since 2002, when volumesales peaked at around 306,000 tonnes. Whiletotal sales were valued at £2.4 billion in2002, in the past two years alone, sales havefallen by as much as 6% to just over £2.2billion.

Mintel senior market analyst David Birdsays last year may have marked a turningpoint for the market, with sales entering agradual but persistent decline which couldlast several years, and he blames consumers’pursuit of health.

“Healthier eating trends, near marketsaturation and competition from alternativehealthier snacking products such as cerealbars and dried fruit all present a threat tosales,” says Bird. “Crisps and savoury snacksin particular have suffered from a real imageproblem, they are generally perceived asbeing predominantly high-fat, high-salt foodswith comparatively few nutritional benefits.

“Another factor here is the decliningpopulation of children aged under 15, whichfell by almost 4% between 2000 and 2005,”adds Bird.

LOW FAT, LOW SALES

But despite increasing concerns about thestate of the nation’s health and waistlines,

sales of low-fat crisps and potato snacks haveexperienced only modest growth and as manyas one in four (26%) British are sceptical ofmanufacturers’ low-fat/low-calorie claims.

“Consumers see crisps as an inherentlyunhealthy product and if they are dieting oradopting a healthier eating regime, they willavoid crisps completely rather than opting fora healthy variant. Some may even choose ahealthier option, for example fruit, or cut outtheir snacking habits altogether,” commentsBird.

Sales of savoury snacks have taken thegreatest battering, falling in volume by astaggering 17% between 2002 and 2005,while crisps have dropped by 9% over thesame 3 year period. In terms of value, snackshave again suffered more than crisps, becausedespite the introduction of healthier rice-based, baked snacks, the sector has notenjoyed the same level of value-added andpremium new product development as seenwithin the crisps sector, says Mintel.

The development of premium productssuch as hand-fried and added-valuepropositions within the crisps market has seengood growth in an otherwise disappointingmarket. New products using a wider range ofingredients such as soy, rice, parsnips andother root vegetables have offered somegrowth opportunities in this area, notesMintel.

BEEFING UP SALES

Despite a 17% decrease in sales of readysalted crisps over the past two years, this

flavour remains the nations’ favourite,accounting for a 26% value share in 2004.Sales of both cheese & onion and salt &vinegar crisps have also suffered in popularity,nevertheless they still account for a 20% and18% market share respectively.

Although each accounting for just 7% inmarket value, the star performers in 2004 areboth prawn cocktail and beef derivatives.While sales of prawn cocktail crisps increasedby as much as 91% between 2002 and 2004,sales of beef derivatives increased by astaggering 103%.

NO LONGER CHILD’S PLAY

With the decline in Britain’s childpopulation – key consumers of crisps andsnacks – manufacturers are targeting otherareas of the population. Some manufacturershave specifically targeted younger males,most notably Walkers with its Nobby’s brand,and extension of this trend could see snacksdeveloped particularly for women (as hasbeen seen in the confectionery market), saysMintel, using bijou and feminine-orientedpackaging.

Crunch time for crisps

'Crisps and Snacks' is available from Mintel for£995. Snacks are defined as any product madefrom small pieces of potato, wheat, rice, corn orother base ingredient, which have been baked,extruded, cooked or processed in any way otherthan frying. Snacks (eg Pringles) which are incompetition with crisps but which are made fromreconstituted potato, are included, as are bakedsnacks such as savoury mini biscuits.

Sweden OKs a low-GI health claimThe Swedish Code of Practice on Health

Claims has introduced a simplified approvalprocedure regarding products with lowglycaemic index (GI). Products with a provenGI less than 55 are allowed to be marketedwith the Code of Practice logo and a productspecific health claim.

Instead of a full review conducted byexternal experts appointed by the SwedishNutrition Foundation (SNF), in the simplifiedversion, the scientific documentation of theproduct is evaluated by SNF’s secretariat, inconsultation with the SNF researchcommittee. If the product fails to fulfill thecriteria given for GI products, the applicationwill be handled through the usual procedurefor application for a health claim under the

Code of Practice.The criteria for the simplified procedure

state that:• At least 10 healthy non-medicating test

subjects need to be tested, using the actualfood product.

• The GI determination should be made inthe morning after fasting.

• The test should be done according to themethodology described in the FAO/WHO(1998) report.

• As long as there is a lack of furtherstandardized methods, the product needsto be assessed at two independentlaboratories.

• Further, the product has to becarbohydrate-rich providing at least 15g

and preferably 20g carbohydrate perserving, and it is recommended that thesubjects eat an amount of the test productthat corresponds to 50g availablecarbohydrates.

Since March of this year, eight productshave already received approvals. All of themare products of Sweden’s Cerealia Foods andBread, or of its joint venture with Finnish-based Raisio Group, called GoGreen AB.Products approved include ready meals withrice or pasta, one muesli product, and onebread. The claim used on the products is:Product X “gives a low and slow blood sugarresponse and has a scientifically tested lowglycaemic index (GI)”.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L N E W S6 JULY 2005

Vital vegetables, functional fruit– what do consumers think?

Consumers in Australia and NewZealand are highly aware of the naturalfunctional properties of fruit andvegetables – but think they could do withbeing tastier. Those are some of thefindings from research into consumers’perceptions of fruit, vegetables and theirhealth benefits, detailed in a book titledHorticultural products as functional foods – a

consumer perspective.

The extensive qualitative andquantitative research described in the bookconstitutes the first step in a researchproject that “aims to develop and delivernovel vegetable products that impart knownhealth benefits to consumers”.

Vital Vegetables is a five year projectfunded and supported by – among others –Horticulture Australia Ltd, the NewZealand Vegetable and Potato Growers

Federation and the Department of PrimaryIndustries, Victoria, Australia.

The market research was designed toexplore whether there is a real opportunityfor the development of functional vegetableproducts in the Australasian market.

Focus groups exploring consumers’understanding, attitudes, beliefs and likelybehaviour towards novel vegetable productsrevealed that:• The concept of functional foods fits well

with fruit and vegetables as there is ahigh level of awareness of their naturalfunctional properties.

• There is virtually no awareness of theterm “functional food”, although uponexplanation, respondents quicklycomprehend and embrace the concept.However, the term itself does not sitcomfortably with them.

• Some consumers want to buy fruits and vegetables with enhanced functionality. However,many would prefer an improvement in taste,as opposed to an increase in nutrients.Being able to provide both, the researchers note, would be ideal.• Consumers would be willing to pay a 10-30%premium for functionally enhanced fruits and vegetables.• To gain consumer trust, functional foods would need to be clearly labeled and sanctioned by a trusted authority.• A nutritional claim, asopposed to a health claim, would be sufficient to gainconsumer acceptance.

The findings of atelephone survey of 600consumers showed:

• The majority ofpeople – 61% – agreed that fruit and

vegetables were already healthy andnutritious and there was no need tochange them.

• Just under half – 46% – agreed that fruitand vegetables were not as nutritious asthey used to be.

• Most respondents – 84% – would preferto consume functional food as a freshfruit or vegetable item than in aprocessed form.

• Although the majority would supportR&D to enhance functionality of fruitsand vegetables, nearly half would not beprepared to compromise ontaste/quality.

The research also canvassed thethoughts of “opinion leaders” – public,high-profile figures in the realms of food,public health and food retail. Very aware offunctional foods, this group were supportiveof functionally-enhanced fruits andvegetables but had concerns about doses –the potential of increased levels of certainelements to upset the body’s balance,toxicity, and the ability of the human bodyto absorb and utilize the high level.Overall, they felt more comfortable aboutenhanced fresh horticultural products thanabout processed “designer” food.

The book concludes with a list ofcritical success factors needed to optimizethe chances of market success:

• Products should focus on familiar fruitand vegetables.

• Products should not compromise ontaste, quality or appearance.

• Products should be produced throughnatural breeding and/or farmingpractices – use of GE technology willsignificantly reduce acceptance.

Preceding the book’s extensive coverageof the results of the qualitative,quantitative and opinion leader research isa review of the state of functional foods.


Horticultural products as functional foods – aconsumer perspective is published for the VitalVegetables project by the New ZealandInstitute for Crop & Food Research and basedon market research conducted by DavidMcKinna et al Pty Ltd. It can be purchasedonline at www.crop.cri.nz.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L N E W SJULY 2005 7

Healthy bugs make for a healthy mouthKnown for its inventiveness in developing

alternative delivery systems for probiotics,Swedish-based Biogaia is stepping into theexpanding market for portable oral careproducts by launching the world’s firstprobiotic dental health products.

Available as a sugar-free chewing gumand lozenges, Biogaia ProDenta (also knownas Dental on the Swedish market) containsL.reuteri Prodentis, a strain that has been shownto counter the effects of bad bacteria like S.

mutans in the mouth. Clinical studiesconducted show that after just two weeks ofusing Biogaia ProDenta, bleeding gums werereduced considerably in patients. After 4weeks treatment, Biogaia ProDental reducedgingivitis by 46% and plaque by 32%.

“The market potential is huge,” enthusesUrban Strindlöv, BioGaia’s Business AreaManager for oral health products. Taking theexample of the Swedish market he says:“40% of all grown ups have some degree ofperiodontitis [tooth loss], of which 10% havesevere periodontitis”. And dental problemsare all related: “You will not get tooth loss ifyou don’t have bleeding gums and you willnot get bleeding gums if you don’t haveplaque.” Even a moderate degree of gingivitisaffects a person’s general health and linkshave already been made by researchers inseveral countries between disturbed oralecology and cardiovascular disease. Ingeneral, dental and oral care are commonconsumer concerns, and the awareness oftheir importance is constantly growing.

BioGaia recommends a daily-dose of twopieces of ProDenta gum or two lozenges,preferably after brushing your teeth.Currently sold through Biogaia’s website, a50 unit package costs SEK64 (€6.95), and a60 unit pack SEK75 (€8.14). An additionalpostage fee of SEK50 (€5.43) per order isadded. Taking into account that older peopledon’t always like chewing gum, the lozengeshave been developed to provide a choice forthe consumer. Although both have apeppermint flavour, the lozenges are milder.

ProDenta challenges the commonrationale that the only good bug is a deadbug, Strindlöv says. Current treatments areeither mechanical or chemical, includingfrequent tooth-brushing, flossing,chlorhexidine, fluoride and chlorine. Withprobiotics there’s now a biological therapy fororal health. This, he says, has been perceivedas very positive, especially on theScandinavian market, where there is anopenness towards probiotic bacteria.

Understandably the dental products are

also benefiting from the awareness created byother probiotic products, but Strindlöv addsthat through these dental products, Biogaiacan reach new target groups. Consumers ofthe dental products are not, he explains, theso-called technology stakeholders that werethe first to eagerly try out probiotic foods.Rather, this is a group that listens to theprofessionals, and is introduced to probioticsthrough their dentist.

Strindlöv emphasizes a clear benefit ofthe dental products when it comes toacceptability: “The consumer sees a directeffect.”

TOP DOWN MARKETING

“This is a wonderful setting formarketing”, Strindlöv says, “everyone is soenthusiastic about our products”. Since thefirst clinical studies were made in 2003, hesays, dentists and their patients have beencrying out for a product. Biogaia has chosena top down market launch, first focusing ondentists and dental hygienists. After smallerpilot projects the official product launch forthe Swedish market took place in May 2005.In contrast to its main business model, basedon partnerships and licensing agreements,Biogaia has decided to keep the dentalproducts in house, at least in the Swedishmarket. Strindlöv gives three explanations forthis strategic decision: the considerablemarket opportunity, the eagerness withinBioGaia to learn about this market and to dothings right and finally the intention to keepaggressive pricing on these products.

Three successful clinical studies havebeen conducted on ProDenta, two in Swedenand one in Japan. Following the studiesBiogaia developed the products andpackaging and worked together with dentistson a test-market basis in southern Sweden,

where dentists sold the products at theirclinics. Simultaneously, communicationmaterial and clinical data was prepared forthe dental hygienists to use. He emphasizesthe role of dental hygienists: “They areimportant as they are open to new ideas andhave a genuine interest”.

From February to May 2005 there was apre-launch when 650 professionals wereapproached with literature, invitations toforums and meetings, and the companybegan advertising in professional magazines.

Strindlöv says this kind of initial footworkis essential for building volume sales later on.According to Strindlöv the response has beenvery good. He is, however, very aware thatthis is not an optimal distribution channel.“We are approaching step two now where wehave started to look for the right channel,” headds.

By first concentrating on the Swedishmarket, Strindlöv says that Biogaia islearning. Being a new line of business forwhat has always been an R&D-centredcompany, there is a lot to learn and he saysthey want to do things, including mistakes, ona small scale first. But international plans arealready in the making and currently aproduct launch in Japan is under preparationthrough a partner. The company is alsolooking at markets in some Arabic countriesand Finland.


MESSAGES ON CHEWING GUM PACK:

Clinical studies have shown that BiogaiaProDenta™ protects your teeth and gums.Daily use inhibits the harmful bacteria thatcause bleeding gums and tooth decay. BiogaiaProDenta™ restores and maintains a healthymicroflora to promote oral health.

At least two chewing gums per day, preferablyafter tooth-brushing.

If a swat team of white-coated scientistssuddenly descends on your area it may not be avirulent disease they’re tracking, but obesity.

For the first time ever, America’s Centersfor Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)dispatched a team of disease detectives, at therequest of the state of West Virginia, toinvestigate its obesity crisis. This is the sameteam of public health professionals that isdispatched for West Nile virus and formeningitis.

“It was a recognition in one of our statesthat their obesity problem was very large andthey needed help assessing the readiness of thestate and the environmental agencies there tocombat it,” Dr Donna Stroup, Director of theCoordinating Center for Health Promotion atthe CDC, told those gathered for a mediabriefing titled Overweight and Obesity: Clearing the

Confusion.

Such is the concern about the obesity

epidemic in America that the CDC is alsopulling together its “best and brightest” fromthe entire agency to tackle this important healthproblem.

“The executive leadership of CDC hasmade a determination to redirect attention andredirect resources around the issue of obesity, tocall people from across the agency, just not inthe chronic disease arena where this activityresides organizationally, but really across CDCto work in a different way with each other andwith our public health partners,” said DrStroup.

The briefing attracted a volley of questionsfrom reporters about whether there was reallyan epidemic of obesity, and – in light of recentstudy findings – whether overweight really didcontribute to an early death. Clearly there’sconfusion out there about the extent and effectof overweight and obesity and it’s suchconfusion that the CDC says it wants to avoid.

To that end it’s establishing a National Centerfor Health Marketing – a place where,explained CDC director Dr Julie LouiseGerberding, “we will be able to apply state ofthe art communications strategies so that wenot only avoid confusing the public but also weuse the very best science and the very bestmethods available to help people get theinformation they need to make healthy choicesabout diet and exercise and other preventablecauses of ill health”.

Another component of the new CDC,added Dr Gerberding, is its health protectionresearch agenda. “We have worked veryhard…to identify not only what are the criticalresearch needs to understand the relationshipbetween obesity and death, but also what arethe critical research needs to help us do a betterjob of preventing obesity or decreasing itscomplications down the road,” she told thegathered media.

U . S . N E W S8 JULY 2005


Chronic obesity? Who you gonna call?FatBusters!

We Can say Go to healthy eating says NIHThe National Institutes of Health (NIH)

has launched a new national public educationprogramme to improve the eating habits ofAmerica’s eight to 13-year-olds.

Developed by the NIH’s National Heart,Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) andpromoted in collaboration with other NIHinstitutes, and national health and youthorganizations and We Can! (Ways to EnhanceChildren’s Activity & Nutrition!) targetsparents, providing resources to encouragehealthy eating, increase physical activity, andreduce sedentary time.

This announcement in June came on theheels of a study, sponsored by the NHLBI, andpublished in the journal Pediatrics, whichprovided evidence that teaching children andtheir parents to make lifestyle changes like thoseproposed in We Can! can have an impact.

The Dietary Intervention Study inChildren (DISC) shows that children who wereenrolled in a behaviourally oriented nutritioneducation programme with their parents andwere taught to follow a diet low in saturated fatand cholesterol developed significantly betterdietary habits over several years compared totheir peers who received only generalnutritional information.

“DISC demonstrates that children andtheir families can learn to enjoy healthy foodsand to be selective about their food choices –

habits that will hopefully stay with themthroughout their lives,” said NHLBI DirectorElizabeth G. Nabel, M.D.

Children in the intervention group learnedto balance their intake of “Whoa” foods –those that were high in saturated fat anddietary cholesterol – and “Go” foods – thoselow in saturated fat and dietary cholesterol.

After three years, children were eatingmore of the “Go” foods except fruit, andconsumed fewer of the “Whoa” foods with oneexception: pizza. But – just like the real world –even those kids taught better eating habits gotapproximately one-third of their total dailycalories from snack foods, desserts and pizza.And children in both groups ate fewer thanrecommended servings of fruits and vegetables.

Despite these blips, the intervention group’sgreater consumption of total daily calories from“Go” foods shows that children can be taughtto improve their diets, according to Linda VanHorn, PhD, RD, professor of preventivemedicine at Northwestern University, leadauthor of the study.

“You can raise a child to enjoy healthyeating and to be selective about food choices,”said Van Horn. “With the right guidance andnutrition education, children learn to preferhealthy foods such as carrots and raisins orcereal as snacks, for example. We could reallyhelp improve both the nutritional quality and

energy balance of our children’s diets byteaching them to make healthy food choices ”

“Parents need to take responsibility forensuring that children have access to healthyfoods. When it’s your turn to bring the snackfor the soccer team, instead of chips or candy,how about having orange slices andstrawberries? Children can learn to say ‘nothanks’ to a sugar-sweetened soda and torequest water or skim milk, but those foodshave to be available to them.”

The NHBLI says We Can! helps parentsteach their children to:• Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables per day • Choose small portions at home and at

restaurants • Eat fewer high-fat foods and energy-dense

foods that are low in nutrient value such asFrench fries, bacon, and doughnuts

• Substitute water or fat-free or low-fat milkfor sweetened beverages such as sodas

• Engage in at least 60 minutes of moderatephysical activity on most, preferably all, daysof the week

• Reduce recreational screen time to no morethan two hours per day

The We Can! tools include a parents’handbook available in Spanish or English and anew online resource –http://wecan.nhlbi.nih.gov

U . S . N E W SJULY 2005 9


Healthy mothers are the new nutrition strategy

Ensure is trying to expand its shakes-and-bars regimen to a whole new category ofcustomer: pregnant women. The RossLaboratories brand has just introduced a linecalled Ensure Healthy Mom that seeks to giveexpectant women a good nutritionalfoundation – as well as to help satisfy theirconditional cravings in a healthy way.

Ensure says that its new line wasspecifically designed for pregnant women, tohelp them get the protein, calcium and otherfood nutrients their bodies need to feed theirgrowing babies. The products include 24vitamins and minerals and, the company says,are “a great complement to the prenatalvitamin.”

“We’d get calls in to our consumer-relations department from pregnant womenasking if Ensure would be good for them,”Deea Angus, Ensure product manager, tellsNew Nutrition Business. “It spurred someinterest. So we did some research on whatwomen were eating when they were pregnant,what they were craving, and why.

“It also makes sense for the brandoverall,” Angus continues. “Ensure reallystands for complete, balanced nutrition for alladults. This is designed for pregnant andnursing women, but we also have a varietywith high calcium, which is good for women

of all ages, and is a good option fortransitioning to after pregnancy.”

Retailing for a suggested $5.99 for fourservings, Ensure Healthy Mom shakes contain200 calories, 10g of protein and only threegrams of fat. They’re packaged in eight-ouncereclosable bottles and are available in CreamyMilk Chocolate and Homemade Vanillaflavours.

Ensure Healthy Mom Snack Bars retailfor a suggested price of $3.49 for a box of 10.They each contain 150 calories and fewerthan three grams of fat per serving. Two snackbars equal one serving. They’re available inFudge Graham and Chocolate ChocolateChip flavors.

“Equate their prices to that of a vending-machine run at 10 in the morning somewhere,where mums go to satisfy their cravings,” saysKeri Butler, a Ross spokeswoman. “So whenyou’re thinking about cost per serving, it lookspretty good especially compared with thethought process that people go through whenthey’re deciding instead to eat junk food.”

Ensure spied opportunity in the pregnant-mum market for at least two substantialreasons beyond the anecdotal fact that somemothers were asking the company for such aproduct.

First, says Tama Bloch, an Ensureresearch scientist, “We know that pregnancy isthe greatest need for nutrition in a woman’slife. But when you look at the science behindit, pregnant women in general haven’t beeneating all that well. They’re missing calciumiron, vitamin E and vitamin C. And evenwhen pregnant women take prenatal vitamins,they still need hundreds of extra calories dailyin their third trimester. We wanted thosecalories to be full of nutrients, not emptycalories.”

The second major opportunity spied byEnsure brand meisters was the craving issue.Many cultures make comic fodder of thestrange and often powerful cravings for foodthat pregnant women demonstrate. And whileEnsure Healthy Mom can’t do much for theexpectant female who absolutely must have ahot fudge sundae topped with dill pickles at 4a.m., company executives concede, EnsureHealthy Mom can help out in many othercases.

“We did a survey and learned that 75% of

pregnant women have cravings, but that only8% reach for something healthy when theydo,” Angus says. “That’s because there aren’ta lot of convenient and delicious options outthere for them to reach for.”

Adds Bloch: “When they do grab forsomething, we don’t want them to begrabbing soda pop, cookies, or French fries.Those are appealing to pregnant womenbecause they’re filling and quick. And whenthose cravings come on, you want somethingright away. These products will fulfill theneeds for sweet, creamy and rich, or cookie,kinds of cravings.”

Ensure is spending big on a multimediaadvertising campaign behind the launch,which began in April. A print ad is running inabout 15 different magazines relating topregnancy and motherhood. The productwebsite, EnsureHealthyMom.com, has a“crazy cravings” contest whose winner will beawarded $10,000 toward their child’seducation.

And the brand has launched a mobilemarketing tour that features an SUV, deckedout like an Ensure Healthy Mom package,which stops at baby fairs, retail stores and evenpregnancy-massage centers in eight majormetropolitan markets. Mothers who alsohappen to be experienced promotionalmarketers staff the vehicle and present whatAngus calls “the girlfriend approach” toconsumers, “talking with mums aboutnutrition and what they’re craving – andpassing out samples.”

The past few months have seen the publication of a swathe of clinical studies providing evidence of theimportance of pregnant women’s nutrition for the future lifetime health of their children.There has alsobeen a rising tide of new product launches aimed at pregnant and lactating women: now Ensure has becomethe first major brand to debut in the segment. By DALE BUSS.

N U T R I T I O N R E S E A R C H10 JULY 2005

NEWS DIGEST

CARBS AND CATARACTSOne of the few published human studieslooking at a link between carbohydrateintake and the development of cataractshas found that carbohydrate quantity, butnot carbohydrate quality, is associatedwith early cortical opacities (clouding inthe cortex).The study also found thatneither the quantity nor the quality ofdietary carbohydrate affects the risk ofnuclear opacities – clouding in thecentre of the lens and the type ofcataract most associated with ageing – inmiddle-aged women.The researchers,from Tufts University, Harvard MedicalSchool and Brigham and Women’sHospital in Boston, studied dietaryinformation taken over 14 years from417 Boston-area members of theNurses’ Health Study cohort aged53–73.After multivariate adjustment, theodds of cortical opacities (LOCS III≥1.0) among women in the highesttertile of carbohydrate intake (≤200g/d)was 2.46 times that among women in thelowest tertile (<185 g/d).This associationwas not affected by adjustment fordietary glycemic index, which was notassociated with early cortical opacities.Carbohydrate nutrition was notassociated with the odds of nuclearopacities (LOCS III ≥2.5).

Chung-Jung Chiu et al, American Journal ofClinical Nutrition,Vol. 81, No. 6, 1411-1416,June 2005.

ELDERLY WOMEN, PROTEIN AND BONEMASSElderly women may need to eat moreprotein than current recommendationssuggest in order to optimise their bonemass, concludes a study by researchersin Australia.The effect of protein intakeon bone density is uncertain, andevidence exists for beneficial effects ofboth low and high protein intakes, notedthe study authors, who conducted across-sectional and longitudinal study of1077 women aged 75 ± 3 years. Subjectsconsumed an average of 80.5 ± 27.8gprotein/day (1.19 ± 0.44g protein/kgbody weight). Regression analysisshowed a positive correlation betweenprotein intake and qualitative ultrasoundof the heel and bone mineral density(BMD) after adjustment for age, bodymass index, and other nutrients.Thedose-response effect was bestcharacterized by protein consumption

Very low-carbohydrate diets (VLCDs) arepopular, but remain controversial, noteUniversity of Connecticut researchers whosummarised the latest studies on the effects ofsuch diets on lipoproteins and related riskfactors for cardiovascular disease.

“Considering the effectiveness of VLCDsin promoting fat-loss and the metabolicsyndrome, condemning their use isunjustified,” conclude the authors. “Weencourage a more unbiased, balancedappraisal of VLCDs.”

Their review finds that:• Although not as effective at lowering LDL -

C, VLCDs consistently improvepostabsorptive and postprandialtriacylglycerols (TAGs), HDL-C, and the

distribution of LDL-C subfractions to agreater extent than low-fat diets.

• VLCDs also improve proinflammatorymarkers when associated with weight-loss.

• Studies usually report mean lipid responses,but individual data indicate a large degree ofvariability in the magnitude and in somecases the direction of lipoprotein responsesto both low-fat and VLCDs. Such variabilitymakes it hard to defend a single dietrecommendation, especially considering thepotential for low-fat/high-carbohydrate dietsto exacerbate TAG, HDL-C, and othercharacteristics of the metabolic syndrome.

Jeff S. Volek, Matthew J. Sharman and Cassandra E.

Forsythe, Journal of Nutrition June 2005.

Give low-carb diets a chance says review

Continued on page 11


An energy-restricted, high-protein, low-fatdiet provides nutritional and metabolic benefitsthat are equal to – and sometimes greater than– those seen with a high-carbohydrate diet, sayresearchers in Australia (1).

The scientists from the CommonwealthScientific and Industrial Research Organisation(CSIRO) looked at the effects of a high-proteindiet and a high-carb diet on body composition,CVD risk, nutritional status, and markers ofbone turnover and renal function in 100overweight, middle-aged women.

The women were randomly sorted tofollow one of two 5,600Kj diets – a high-protein (HP) or a high-carbohydrate (HC) diet– for 12 weeks. The researchers found:• Weight-loss was 7.3 ± 0.3 kg with both diets.• Subjects with high serum triacylglycerol

(>1.5 mmol/L) lost more fat mass with thehigh-protein than with the high-carb diet 6.4± 0.7 and 3.4 ± 0.7 kg, respectively) andhad a greater decrease in triacylglycerolconcentrations with the high protein (–0.59± 0.19 mmol/L) than with the high carb(–0.03 ± 0.04 mmol/L) diet.

• Triacylglycerol concentrations decreasedmore with the high-protein (0.30 ± 0.10mmol/L) than with the high-carb (0.10 ±0.06 mmol/L) diet.

• Fasting LDL-C, HDL-C, glucose, insulinand C-reactive protein concentrationsdecreased with weight-loss.

• Serum vitamin B-12 increased 9% with thehigh-protein diet and decreased 13% withthe high-carb diet.

• Bone turnover markers increased 8–12%and calcium excretion decreased by 0.8mmol/day.

Another study (2), this time in obese youngadults, pitted a low-glycemic load (GL) dietagainst a low-fat diet and found that the formercould be more effective in reducing CVD risk.

Noting that “the optimal nutritionalapproach for the prevention of cardiovasculardisease among obese persons remains a topic ofintense controversy”, the year-long study putthe 23 subjects on either an ad libitum low-GLdiet, without strict limitation on carbohydrateintake (with 45–50% of energy fromcarbohydrates and 30–35% from fat), or aconventional low-fat diet (restricted in energy(250–500 kcal/d deficit) and fat – <30% ofenergy – with 55–60% of energy fromcarbohydrate).

Body weight decreased significantly over asix-month intensive intervention in both theexperimental and conventional diet groups(–8.4% and –7.8%, respectively) and remainedbelow baseline at 12 months (–7.8% and–6.1%, respectively).

The experimental diet group showed asignificantly greater mean decline in plasmatriacylglycerols than did the conventional dietgroup (–37.2% and –19.1%, respectively).Mean plasminogen activator inhibitor 1concentrations decreased (–39.0%) in theexperimental diet group but increased (33.1%)in the conventional diet group. Changes incholesterol concentrations, blood pressure, andinsulin sensitivity did not differ significantlybetween the groups.

1. Manny Noakes, American Journal of Clinical

Nutrition, June 2005.

2. Cara B Ebbeling et al, American Journal of Clinical

Nutrition, May 2005.

Protein vs carb, low-fat vs low-glycemicload: latest findings

N U T R I T I O N R E S E A R C HJULY 2005 11

NEWS DIGEST

expressed in tertiles, such that subjectsin the lowest tertile (<66g protein/day)had significantly lower qualitativeultrasound of the heel (1.3%) and hipBMD (2.6%) than did the subjects in thehigher tertiles (>87g protein/day).

Amanda Devine et al, American Journal ofClinical Nutrition,Vol. 81, No. 6, 1423-1428,June 2005.

CLA BENEFITS BONE IN STUDYA University of Connecticut studyindicates dietary conjugated linoleic acid(CLA) may positively benefit bonemineral density (BMD) inpostmenopausal women, and its authorssay more studies are warrantedexamining the relationship betweendietary CLA and BMD.Their analysis ofthe diets, physical activity and BMD of136 Caucasian, healthy, postmenopausalwomen, with an average age of 68.6years, reveals that CLA (63.1 ± 46.8mg)was a significant predictor of BMD in amultiple regression model containingyears since menopause (18.5 ± 8.4y),lean tissue, energy intake (1691 ±382kcal/day) dietary calcium (873 ±365mg), protein (70.6 ± 18.6g), fat (57.9± 23.9 g), zinc (19.2 ± 13.6 mg), andcurrent and past physical activity.Subjects were also divided into groupsbelow (Group 1) and above (Group 2)the median intake for CLA. Group 2 hadhigher BMD in the forearm and higherBMD in the hip, lumbar spine and wholebody, however statistical significance wasnot reached.

Rhonda A. Brownbill, Mary Petrosian andJasminka Z. Ilich, Journal of the AmericanCollege of Nutrition, June 2005.

LACTOSE INTOLERANT? BLAME YOURANCESTORS.Data from 270 indigenous populations in39 countries reveals that 61% of peoplestudied could not digest milk – theywere lactose-intolerant – ranging from2% in Denmark to 100% in Zambia.Researchers from Cornell Universityfound that lactose intolerance decreaseswith increasing latitude and increaseswith rising temperature, and especiallywith the difficulty in maintaining dairyherds safely and economically.Theyconclude that it is primarily peoplewhose ancestors came from places


Dairy, diabetes risk andprostate cancer

Men who consume more dairy productshave a lower incidence of Type 2 diabetes,according to new research from MassachusettsGeneral Hospital, Harvard School of PublicHealth and Brigham and Women’s Hospital –the first large-scale, prospective examination ofa relationship between dairy intake anddiabetes risk (1).

“Our study found that men consuminghigher levels of dairy products, especially low-fat dairy foods, had a significantly lower risk ofdeveloping Type 2 diabetes during a 12-yearperiod,” says Hyon Choi, MD, DrPH, directorof Outcomes Research in the MGHRheumatology Unit, the paper’s lead author.“While individuals should consider both thebenefits and risks of dairy foods beforeconsidering changing their diets, consumingup to two servings daily of low-fat dairyproducts can probably be recommended formost people.”

Lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise andweight are established risk factors for Type 2diabetes. Several recent studies have suggestedthat dairy consumption may help controlweight and blood pressure and reduce therisks of health problems such as coronaryartery disease and gout. Other research hasimplied that dairy foods could help preventinsulin resistance, a precursor of Type 2diabetes. The researchers conducted thecurrent study to directly examine therelationship between dairy consumption anddiabetes.

The study evaluated information frommore than 41,000 participants in the HealthProfessionals Follow-up Study who did nothave diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancerwhen the study began in 1986. About 1,200men went on to develop Type 2 diabetes. Theresearchers then analyzed the dietaryinformation all participants provided in 1986,1990 and 1994 to determine how diet relatedto their risk of developing diabetes.

Results showed that those men consuminghigher levels of dairy foods had significantlyless risk of developing Type 2 diabetes thandid those consuming the lowest levels, andfurther analysis showed the risk reduction wasalmost exclusively associated with low-fat ornon-fat dairy foods. In general, each serving-per-day increase in dairy intake resulted in a9% reduction in the risk of developing thedisorder. Controlling for consumption ofseveral other types of food, activity level andfamily history did not change the association.

“Additional studies will be required bothto confirm this relationship and to see if theresults apply to women or to men youngerthan this group, who were in their 50s whenthey joined the study,” says Choi. “Anotherquestion to be investigated would be whetheradjusting dairy intake could be helpful topeople with established Type 2 diabetes, andthe mechanism behind any relation betweendairy intake and diabetes risk also needs to beclarified.”

A study of men in South Wales (2) whichexamined associations between milkconsumption and incident heart-disease andstroke found that those who drank more thanthe median amount of milk had a reduced riskof an ischaemic stroke, and possibly a reducedrisk of an ischaemic heart-disease event.

“These conclusions are in agreement withthe results of a previously reported overview of10 large, long term cohort studies based onfood frequency intake records,” say theauthors.

“These results give no convincingevidence of an increased risk of vasculardisease from milk drinking,” they conclude.

However, if you were thinking of uppingyour dairy intake for the sake of your health, astudy of 3,600 men has found that dairyconsumption may increase prostate cancer riskthrough a calcium-related pathway (3).

Researchers examined the association ofdairy, calcium, and vitamin D intake withprostate cancer, noting that “Calcium andlow-fat milk have been promoted to reducerisk of osteoporosis and colon cancer.Therefore, the mechanisms by which dairyand calcium might increase prostate cancerrisk should be clarified and confirmed”. Theyfound that, compared with men in the lowesttertile for dairy food intake, men in the highesttertile had a relative risk (RR) of 2.2. Low-fatmilk was associated with increased risk (RR =1.5), but whole milk was not (RR = 0.8).Dietary calcium was also strongly associatedwith increased risk (RR = 2.2). Afteradjustment for calcium intake, neither vitaminD nor phosphorus was clearly associated withrisk.

1. Hyon Choi et al, Archives of Internal Medicine,

May 9 2005.

2. P C Elwood et al, Journal of Epidemiology and

Community Health 2005.

3. Marilyn Tseng et al, American Journal of Clinical

Nutrition, May 2005.




NEWS DIGEST

where dairy herds could be raised safelyand economically, such as in Europe, whohave developed the ability to digest milkand passed on gene mutations thatmaintain lactase into adulthood. On theother hand, most adults whose ancestorslived in very hot or very cold climatesthat couldn’t support dairy herding or inplaces where deadly diseases of cattlewere present before 1900, such as inAfrica and many parts of Asia, do nothave the ability to digest milk afterinfancy.According to the NationalDigestive Diseases InformationClearinghouse, some 30 million to 50million Americans are lactose intolerant,including up to 75 % of AfricanAmericans and American Indians and90% of Asian Americans.

HIGH DAIRY-FRUIT-VEGE DIET BETTERFOR BP THAN LOW-FAT APPROACH For a comparable 5kg weight-loss, a diethigh in low-fat dairy products,vegetables, and fruit resulted in a greaterdecrease in blood pressure than did alow-fat diet, report researchers fromDeakin University in Australia. “Thisdietary approach to achieving weightreduction may confer an additionalbenefit in reducing blood pressure inthose who are overweight,” they add.The researchers set out to assess theeffect on blood pressure of two weight-reduction diets: a low-fat diet (LF diet)and a moderate-sodium, high-potassium,high-calcium, low-fat Dietary Approachesto Stop Hypertension – DASH for short– diet (WELL diet). Sixty three menwere randomly assigned to either theWELL or the LF diet for 12 weeks, andboth diet groups undertook 0.5 hours ofmoderate physical activity on most daysof the week.Among the 54 men whocompleted the study, the average age was47.9 ± 9.3y (WELL diet, n = 27; LF diet, n= 27), and their mean baseline homesystolic and diastolic blood pressureswere 129.4 ± 11.3 and 80.6 ± 8.6mm Hg,respectively. Body weight decreased by4.9 ± 0.6kg (±SEM) in the WELL groupand by 4.6 ± 0.6kg in the LF group.Therewas a greater decrease in blood pressurein the WELL group than in the LF groupin both systolic (5.5 ± 1.9mm Hg) anddiastolic blood pressure (4.4 ± 1.2mmHg ).

Caryl A Nowson et al,American Journal of ClinicalNutrition,Vol. 81,No. 5, 983-989,May 2005.

Adolescent girls skip breakfast morefrequently as they grow older, according toa new study (1).

The study indicates skipping breakfast“may predispose” girls to diets that are lowin calcium and fibre, and that girls whoroutinely eat breakfast have a reduced BMIcompared with girls who are “infrequentbreakfast eaters.”

The study was conducted byresearchers at Children’s Hospital MedicalCenter, Cincinnati; Maryland MedicalResearch Institute; National Heart, Lungand Blood Institute; NortheasternUniversity; St. Joseph (Conn.) College andWesleyan University. They examined foodrecords for 2,379 girls, beginning at age 9or 10, who participated in NHLBI’s nine-year bi-racial Growth Health Study.Among the findings:• At all ages between 9 and 19, African-

American girls consistently ate breakfastless frequently than white girls.

• Rates of breakfast consumption droppedfrom more than 77% for 9-year-oldwhite girls and 57% for 9-year-oldAfrican-American girls to less than 32%and 22%, respectively, by age 19.

• At age 9, fewer than 1% of white girlsand 2.5% of African-American girlsskipped breakfast on each day of athree-day tracking period. But by age

19, more than 19% of white girls and24% of African-American girls skippedbreakfast all three days.

• Girls who consistently ate breakfast hada lower BMI than those who didn’t.

• Girls who consistently ate breakfast hadhigher fibre and calcium intakes.

Meanwhile, a new review of recentscientific studies of children’s breakfastconsumption indicates breakfast truly is themost important meal of the day – forschool-age children at least (2). A group ledby researchers at the University of Floridaexamined the results of 47 studies todetermine relationships among children’sbreakfast consumption, body weight andacademic performance.

The studies showed that, even thoughthe quality of breakfasts varied, childrenwho ate breakfast had better nutritionalprofiles than those children who skippedbreakfast. The review of the studies alsofound breakfast eaters generally consumedmore calories each day, but were less likelyto be overweight and indicated eatingbreakfast may improve children’s memory,test grades and school attendance.

1. The Journal of the American Dietetic

Association, June 2005.

2. The Journal of the American Dietetic

Association, May 2005.Continued on page 13


Milk calories add weightin teen study

Milk is promoted as a healthy beverage forchildren, but researchers have mixed viewsabout its effect on weight: some believe thatestrone and whey protein in dairy productscause weight-gain while others claim thecalcium in dairy promotes weight-loss.

In a new study of adolescents, those whodrank the most milk gained more weight, but itwas the added calories – rather than anyparticular component of the milk – thatappeared responsible.

“Contrary to our hypotheses,” write theauthors, from Brigham & Women’s Hospitaland Harvard Medical School and HarvardSchool of Public Health, Boston, Mass,“dietary calcium and skim and 1% milk wereassociated with weight-gain, but dairy fat wasnot.

“Drinking large amounts of milk mayprovide excess energy to some children,” theyconclude.

Of the group of 12,829 U.S. children, aged9 to 14 years in 1996, children who drank morethan three servings a day of milk gained morein BMI than those who drank smaller amounts.For boys, milk intake was associated with smallBMI increases during the year; results weresimilar for girls. Quantities of 1% milk (boys)and skim milk (girls) were significantlyassociated with BMI gain, as was total dietarycalcium intake.

Multivariate analyses of milk, dairy fat,calcium, and total energy intake suggested thatenergy was the most important predictor ofweight-gain. Analyses of year-to-year changesin milk, calcium, dairy fat, and total energyintakes provided generally similar conclusions;an increase in energy intake from the prior yearpredicted BMI gain in boys and girls.

Catherine S. Berkey et al, Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med.

2005;159:543-550.


In praise of breakfast

N U T R I T I O N R E S E A R C HJULY 2005 13

NEWS DIGEST




FRUIT AND VEGES REDUCE CATARACTRISKA high intake of fruit and vegetables mayhave a modest protective effect oncataract, suggests a study from Harvardand Brigham and Women’s Hospital inBoston. Noting that prospective data oncataract in relation to total fruit andvegetable intake are limited, the authorsexamined whether higher fruit andvegetable intake reduces the risk ofcataract and cataract extraction in alarge, prospective cohort of women.They assessed fruit and vegetable intakein 1993 among 39,876 female healthprofessionals; 35,724 of these womenwere free of a diagnosis of cataract atbaseline and were followed for incidentcataract and cataract extraction. Duringan average of 10 years of follow-up, 2067cataracts and 1315 cataract extractionswere confirmed. Compared with womenin the lowest quintile of fruit andvegetable intake, women with higherintakes had modest 10–15% reducedrisks of cataract. For cataractextraction, no significant inverse trendwas observed.

William G Christen et al, American Journalof Clinical Nutrition,Vol. 81, No. 6, 1417-1422, June 2005.

ANOTHER REASON TO CONTROLWEIGHTWomen who keep their weight undercontrol may dramatically reduce theirodds of developing breast cancer, apopulation-based study suggests.Thestudy, which used data from 3,000women in China, shows a strong linkbetween “energy balance” – thedifference between energy intake(eating) and energy expenditure(activity) – and breast cancer risk, reportresearchers from Meharry MedicalCollege, the Vanderbilt-Ingram CancerCenter and the Shanghai CancerInstitute in China.Women with lowlevels of physical activity and higher bodymass index levels were at more thantwice the risk of developing breastcancer than women who undertook theequivalent of about 45 minutes of briskwalking or 20 minutes of vigorousexercise per day, per year. Lead authorAlecia S. Malin, DrPH, CHES, assistantprofessor of Surgery at Meharry andassistant professor of Medicine at

Women with a high dietary intake ofvitamin B6 over several years have adecreased risk of colorectal cancer (CRC),according to a study published in theAmerican Gastroenterological Association(AGA) journal Gastroenterology.

Women who consume moderate tolarge amounts of alcohol in addition tovitamin B6 have more than a 70% reducedrisk of developing CRC.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutetin Stockholm, Sweden, and the HarvardSchool of Public Health used data fromthe Swedish Mammography Cohort toevaluate the association between long-termdietary vitamin B6 intake from foodsources and colorectal cancer risk, and itsmodification by alcohol consumption. Thestudy used data from nearly 67,000women, aged 40 to 75 years.

“Consuming a diet high in vitamin B6may reduce the risk of colorectal cancer inwomen, more specifically those whoconsume alcohol,” said Susanna Larsson,MSc, study author with the KarolinskaInstitutet. “Inadequate vitamin B6 statusmay lead to the development of cancerous

polyps in the colon, so it is important forwomen to maintain a normal to highintake of vitamin B6.”

Researchers observed that alcoholconsumption in women with low vitaminB6 intake resulted in higher risk ofdeveloping colorectal cancer and thatincreasing intake reduces this risksignificantly. However, they say findingsneed further confirmation in largeprospective cohort or intervention studies.

“These findings may have importantimplications for the prevention ofcolorectal cancer in women who consumealcohol because their vitamin B6 status canbe easily improved through dietarymodifications, vitamin supplementationand fortification,” said Larsson.

The second-leading cause of cancerdeaths in the United States, it is estimatedthat more than 28,000 women with CRCwill die in 2005.

Larsson, S. et at al, Gastroenterology, June

2005.

Vitamin B6 cuts women’scolorectal cancer risk

Diets rich in vitamin E could protectagainst the development of Parkinson’sdisease (PD), suggests a meta-analysis inThe Lancet Neurology.

PD is a progressive neurodegenerativedisease with unknown cause although it’slikely to result from the combined effects ofmultiple factors including ageing, geneticpredisposition, and environmentalexposures. Some studies suggest that dietsrich in vitamin E are protective againstPD; other studies show no such benefit.

Mayhar Etminan (Royal VictoriaHospital, Quebec, Canada, and Centre forClinical Epidemiology and Evaluation,Vancouver, Canada) and colleagues did ameta-analysis to try to establish whethervitamin C, vitamin E, and beta-carotenecan lower the risk of PD. The investigatorssearched for relevant studies from 1966 toMarch 2005. They combined the datafrom eight studies and found that moderate

dietary intake of vitamin E decreased therisk of developing PD. However, dietaryvitamin C and beta-carotene did not seemto confer any protective effects. The role ofvitamin E supplements is not clear, but atleast one study suggests that syntheticsupplements do not confer the samebenefit as dietary sources, state theauthors.

Dr Etminan concludes: “Our datasuggest that diets rich in vitamin E protectagainst the development of PD. Nodefinite conclusions regarding the benefitsof supplemental vitamin E can be made.Neither vitamin C nor beta-carotene seemsto have a neuroprotective effect. Given thatthese data are observational, confirmationfrom well-designed randomised controlledtrials is necessary before suggestingchanges in routine clinical practice.”

The Lancet Neurology, June 2005.

Dietary vitamin E maylower Parkinson’s risk


NEWS DIGESTContinued from page 13

Vanderbilt, points out that the anti-cancer effect of lowering caloric intakealone, demonstrated in animals, is not afeasible strategy for cancer prevention inhumans. Indeed, her team’s results showthat greater energy intake alone was notassociated with an increased risk ofbreast cancer among physically inactivewomen, suggesting that it is thecombination of exercise and weightcontrol that is important.

Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers &Prevention, June 2005.

WARNING BELLS OVER METABOLICSYNDROME IN ELEMENTARY KIDSThe metabolic syndrome, the dangerouscluster of risk factors previously seen inadults and adolescents, is now appearingin elementary school-aged children,report researchers behind a three-yearphysical activity intervention and studyto determine the prevalence of thecondition in young children.Of the 375second- and third-grade boys and girlsassessed in the study, 5% of both boysand girls were identified as having themetabolic syndrome. Half of the childrenhad no components, and 45% had one ortwo components, with elevated bloodpressure being the most common.Although the prevalence is low in thispopulation, researchers say the resultsshow the need for early prevention sincecomponents of the metabolic syndrometrack into adulthood.“The prevalence ofmetabolic syndrome dramaticallyincreased among children who wereoverweight, with one in five overweightchildren having the condition,” saidKatrina D. DuBose, Ph.D., lead author.“To help manage this, children need toparticipate in more physical activity andchoose healthier foods to eat. Parentsand teachers can help by encouragingchildren to be more active both insideand outside of school.”

Findings presented at the 52nd AmericanCollege of Sports Medicine (ACSM) AnnualMeeting in Nashville,Tenn., June 1-4, 2005.

Kids love raisins, but parents often worrythat the sweet, sticky fruit will give theirchildren dental decay. Now they can rest easierfollowing the news that compounds found inraisins actually fight bacteria in the mouth thatcause cavities and gum disease.

“Our laboratory analyses showed thatphytochemicals in this popular snack foodsuppress the growth of several species of oralbacteria associated with caries and gumdisease,” said lead author Christine D. Wu,Professor and Associate Dean for Research atthe University of Illinois at Chicago College ofDentistry.

Analyses identified five phytochemicals inThompson seedless raisins: oleanolic acid,oleanolic aldehyde, betulin, betulinic acid, and5-(hydroxymethyl)-2-furfural.

Oleanolic acid inhibited the growth of twospecies of oral bacteria: Streptococcus mutans,which causes cavities, and Porphyromonasgingivalis, which causes periodontal disease.

Wu said that the data counter a

longstanding public perception that raisinspromote cavities: “Raisins are perceived assweet and sticky, and any food that containssugar and is sticky is assumed to cause cavities.But our study suggests the contrary.Phytochemicals in raisins may benefit oralhealth by fighting bacteria that cause cavitiesand gum disease.”

In an earlier study, Wu’s collaborator Dr. S.Fadavi (Pediatric Dentistry, UIC College ofDentistry) found that adding raisins to brancereal did not increase the acidity of dentalplaque. However, the commercial raisin-brancereal with added sugar was most acidogeniccompared with raisins or bran cereal alone.

“Foods that are sticky do not necessarilycause tooth decay; it is mainly the added sugar(sucrose) that contributes to the problem,” Wusaid.

Study presented at the 105th General Meeting of the

American Society for Microbiology, June 5-9, 2005.

Funded by the California Raisin Marketing Board.

Raisins fight tooth decay


Oat bran for heart-health Overweight women who ate muffins

enriched with oat-bran experiencedimprovements in their metabolic profile,leading researchers to conclude that “oatbran-rich foods have beneficial effects on themetabolic profile of overweight women”.

“Integration of these foods as part of ahealthy diet may, therefore, improve thecardiovascular risk profile of women,” addthe authors.

The 34 premenopausal women aged 22-53 years were randomly assigned either tothe control group (no supplement) or to thetreatment group, which received two oat

bran-enriched muffins per day (28g/day ofoat bran) during four weeks.

Supplementation with oat bran had abeneficial effect on HDL-C: compared tothe control, a mean increase in plasmaHDL-C levels of 11.2% was observed inwomen eating the oat bran supplementwhereas the total cholesterol/HDL-C ratiodecreased by 7.0%. Results were similarafter adjustment for age, apo E genotypeand weight change.

Julie Robitaille et al, Annals of Nutrition and

Metabolism 2005.

The usual soy intake of women inShanghai is associated with lower bloodpressure, particularly among elderly women.

Noting that there was scanty data on thelong-term effects of the normal intake of soyfoods on blood pressure in generalpopulations, researchers assessed subjects’intake of soy foods at baseline, and measuredblood pressure 2-to-3 years after the baselinesurvey among 45,694 participants of theShanghai Women’s Health Study aged 40–70who had no history of hypertension, diabetes,or CVD.

Soy protein intake was inversely associatedwith both systolic BP and diastolic BP after

adjustment for age, body mass index, andlifestyle and other dietary factors. Theadjusted mean systolic BP was 1.9 mm Hglower and the diastolic BP was 0.9 mm Hglower in women who consumed ≥25 g soyprotein/day than in women consuming<2.5g/day.

The inverse associations became strongerwith increasing age. Among women >60 yearsold, the corresponding differences were –4.9mm Hg for systolic BP and –2.2 mm Hg fordiastolic BP.

Gong Yang et al, American Journal of Clinical

Nutrition, Vol. 81, No. 5, 1012-1017, May 2005.

Soy benefits blood pressure

S O C I A L & C O N S U M E R R E S E A R C HJULY 2005 15

TV confuses children about which foods arehealthy, says expert

White bread used to be the leadingsource of calories in the average Americandiet – now Americans are drinking thesecalories instead.

Preliminary data from scientists at theJean Mayer USDA Human NutritionResearch Center on Aging at TuftsUniversity suggest that soda and sweetdrinks are now the greatest source ofcalories for Americans.

Odilia Bermudez, PhD, MPH, andcolleagues studied the reported diets of alarge sample of American adults. Morethan two thirds reported drinking enough

soda and/or sweet drinks to provide themwith a greater proportion of daily caloriesthan any other food. Obesity rates werehigher among these sweet drink consumers.Consumers of 100% orange juice and low-fat milk tended to be less overweight, onaverage.

“These results are startling,” saidBermudez, “and indicate that we need amuch better understanding of how theAmerican diet has changed. Our paper willlook more closely at the issue of sweetdrink consumption and its relation toobesity factors among three of the main

ethnic groups included in the nationalsurveys: African Americans, Hispanics andnon-Hispanic whites.”

Bermudez is hopeful that, “by helpingto identify the main sources of excessenergy in the American diet, this work maycontribute to the development of much-needed strategies to combat obesity in theAmerican public”.

The research was presented in abstractform at the Experimental BiologyConference in April and a morecomprehensive paper is being developed.

Americans are consuming more cream,sour cream, ice-cream, cottage cheese,yoghurt and flavoured milk, but they appearto be losing their enthusiasm for plain fluidmilk options: “Fat-free milk saw a 3.9%decline in consumption, whole milkconsumption decreased 1.7%, andlow/reduced-fat milk consumption dropped1.2%,” said University of Illinois Extensiondairy specialist Mike Hutjens. “There aresome exciting factors in the future fordairy,” added Hutjens. “Schools are

beginning to offer single-serve plasticcontainers for milk to improve nutritionwhile reducing high sugar-based sodaconsumption. And some leading fast-foodrestaurants are offering flavoured milk,leading to skyrocketing milk consumptionby children. Adults are using energy drinksthat use whey proteins and other milkprotein fractions.” In 2004, Hutjens saidAmericans consumed 582 pounds of milkequivalents per person. Cheese, at 38%, isthe number one dairy product for

consumers, followed by 32% for fluid milk,13% for butter, and 8.5% for ice-cream.Fluid milk consumption is 32% ofconsumer’s milk use with 30% of that figurebeing 2% milk, 15% fat-free milk, 13% 1%milk, and 3% flavoured milk. Specialtymilks grew 10% from 2002 to 2003 (the lastyear for which figures are available)accounting for 7% of all milk salesincluding enhanced and fortified milk at51%, 19% for soy beverages, 16% forlactose-free milk, and 14% for organic milk.

Despite – or perhaps because of – thebarrage of information about food that theyconsume while watching television, kids aregetting the wrong message about healthyeating, says a new study.

The study of 134 first-to-third-gradersfound that the more television kids watch, themore confused they are about which foods are– and which aren’t – going to help them growup strong and healthy.

“Child television viewers are bombardedwith health claims in television advertising,”said the study author, Kristen Harrison, aprofessor of speech communication at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.“Given the plentitude of advertisements ontelevision touting the health benefits of eventhe most nutritionally bankrupt of foods,child viewers are likely to become confusedabout which foods are in fact healthy.”

Increased television viewing had adouble-negative effect on the children in thestudy. Regardless of their initial nutritional

knowledge, the more television they watched,the less able they also were “to provide soundnutritional reasons for their food choices”.Foods marketed as aiding weight-loss wereparticularly problematical for the kids in thestudy. They equated the words “diet” and“fat-free” with being nutritious.

“When they were presented with choiceslike Diet Coke vs. orange juice and fat-freeice-cream vs. cottage cheese, they were morelikely to pick the wrong answer – the diet andfat-free foods – than when they werepresented with choices without these labels,for example, spinach vs. lettuce,” saidHarrison.

“The labels ‘diet’ and ‘fat-free’ suggestthat these foods are good for them and makeit harder for them to pick the ‘right’ answer,”Harrison said, noting that the goal of thestudy was “to gauge children’s understandingof which food would help them grow, notmake them slimmer”.

TV advertising intentionally blurs the

lines between diet and nutritional – inHarrison’s words it “frames” diet foods by“equating weight-loss benefits with nutritionalbenefits”. One TV ad for chocolate syrup, forexample, runs the tagline, “as always, fatfree”.

Adults, Harrison said, should be able tounderstand the difference between foods thatare healthy because they help one grow up,and foods that are healthy because theyprevent one from growing out, “but this is toomuch to expect kids to understand.”

Harrison cited previous studies that havefound that 97.5% of the food commercialsappearing on weekend morning TV networkprogramming were for unhealthy foods –defined as products containing significantamounts of fat, sodium, cholesterol or sugar;for weekend evening programming, 78.3% ofthe commercials were for unhealthy foods.

Study findings appear in the most recent issue of the

journal Health Communication.

Liquid diet giving Americans most of their calories


Future for dairy “exciting”

S O C I A L & C O N S U M E R R E S E A R C H16 JULY 2005


Get off the scales for thesake of your health

Counting calories and closely watchingyour weight may not be the best path tohealth, report nutrition researchers at theUniversity of California, Davis.

The findings of the two-year studysuggest that significant improvements inoverall health can be made, regardless ofweight-loss, when women learn torecognize and follow internal hunger cuesand begin feeling better about their sizeand shape.

“We have been ingrained to think thatseriously large people can only makeimprovements in their health if they dietand slim down,” said nutrition researcherand professor Linda Bacon, who conductedthe study along with Judith Stern, a UCDavis professor of nutrition and internalmedicine. “But this study tells us that youcan make significant improvements in bothmetabolic and psychological health withoutever stepping on the scales or countingcalories. You can relax about food and eatwhat you want.”

Although this study included onlywomen, the researchers say that there is noreason to believe that the results would bedifferent for men.

To avoid medical complications fromobesity, health professionals haveencouraged their obese patients to loseweight. But dieting has not provensuccessful in the long run. Initial weight-lossis often followed by a return to at or nearthe original weight, with no improvementsin health indicators such as blood pressureor cholesterol levels.

Faced with the dismal track record ofdieting, the rising prevalence of obesity,and the premise that obesity itself may berelatively benign compared with healthhabits, nutritionists and health professionalsbegan to look for a more effective way ofdealing with the health risks. One modelthat has arisen is known as Health at EverySize. This approach encourages obesepeople to actually back off from monitoringhow much food they eat and, instead, trainthemselves to pay more attention tointernal body cues that signal hunger andfullness.

The UC Davis study examined theeffectiveness of the Health at Every Sizeapproach compared with traditional

dieting. The study started off with 78female participants ranging in age from 30to 45 years old. Half were assigned to adieting group and half to a non-dietingHealth at Every Size group.

Members of the dieting group were toldto moderately restrict their foodconsumption, maintain food diaries andmonitor their weight. They were providedwith information on the benefits ofexercise, on behavioural strategies forsuccessful dieting, and on how to countcalories and fat content, read food labelsand shop for appropriate foods.

Participants in the non-dieting groupwere instructed to let go of restrictiveeating habits associated with dieting.Instead they were told to pay closeattention to internal body cues indicatingwhen they were truly hungry or full, and tohow the food made them feel. They alsoreceived standard nutritional information tohelp them choose healthful foods, andparticipated in a support group designed tohelp them better understand how cultureinfluences the experience of obese peopleand to become more accepting of theirlarger bodies. In addition, they wereencouraged to identify and deal withbarriers, including negative self-image,which might get in the way of enjoyingphysical activity.

The study spanned two years, with eachgroup meeting for 24 weekly treatmentsessions and, after that, for six monthlyoptional support group meetings. They alsoattended five testing sessions: at thebeginning of the study, halfway through thetreatment at 12 weeks, following treatmentat 26 weeks, after the support meetingsended at 52 weeks and for follow-up at 104weeks. At the testing sessions, factors suchas blood pressure and cholesterol levelswere measured. The participants’ levels ofphysical activity also were evaluated, aswere their eating behaviours and attitudestoward weight, body shape and eating.

Almost all (92%) of the non-dietinggroup stayed in the study throughout thetreatment period, while almost half (42%)of the dieters dropped out before finishingtreatments. This reinforces another messageof the research, say the scientists – that inthe long run, people are much more likely

to stick with a non-diet than a diet.The study found that:

• The non-dieters maintained their sameweight throughout the study. The dietinggroup lost 5.2% of their initial weight bythe end of the 24-week treatment period,but regained almost all of it by the endof the two-year study.

• The non-dieters showed an initialincrease in their total cholesterol levels,but this significantly decreased by theend of the study, as did their levels ofLDL cholesterol. The dieters showed nosignificant change in total or LDLcholesterol levels at any time.

• Both groups significantly lowered theirsystolic blood pressure during the first 52weeks of the study. By the end of thestudy at 104 weeks, however, the non-dieters had sustained this improvement,while the diet group had not.

• By the end of the two-year study, thenon-dieters had almost quadrupled theirmoderate physical activity. The dietinggroup had a significant increase inphysical activity right after the treatmentperiod ended but had slipped back totheir initial levels by the end of the study.

• The non-dieters demonstrated significantimprovements in self-esteem anddepression at the end the study, while thediet group demonstrated a worsening inself-esteem. The dieters’ depression levelsinitially improved but then returned tobaseline.

So, while the non-dieters did not loseweight, they succeeded in improving theiroverall health, as measured by cholesterollevels, blood pressure, physical activity andself-esteem. The dieters, on the other hand,were not able to sustain any of the short-term improvements they experienced andworsened in terms of their self-esteem.

“Given the difficulties most obesepeople experience in sustaining weight-loss,the findings suggest that people are betteradvised to focus on behaviour change thanweight to achieve their health goals,” saidStern.

Results of the study will appear in the June issue

of the Journal of the American Dietetic

Association.

This year, and next, will see a steadyincrease in the still-small numbers ofproducts launched with added omega-3.The whole industry will be looking at howthe new omega-3 products perform. Withthat in mind its worth summarizing the fourkey lessons that have emerged from the casestudies of omega-3 brands that we haveincluded in this issue (see pages 3, 19 and20) and in our last issue (see June 2005 New

Nutrition Business):

Lesson One: An excellent food. Thatthe underlying product should be excellent –so good in taste, texture and all the othernormal food and beverage features that itcould sell well in its own right even withoutthe addition of a health ingredient – is themessage that emerged very, very stronglyfrom our interviews with George WestonFoods in Australia (see page 23 June 2005New Nutrition Business) and Puleva in Spain(see page 19 of this issue). The former’s TipTop Up brand is the world’s most-successfulomega-3 bread and also the world’s secondmost-successful omega-3 supermarketbrand. The latter’s milk is the world’s most-successful omega-3 supermarket product.

Lesson Two: Who has heard ofomega-3? Ideally a measurably highpercentage of your consumer market mustbe receptive to the ingredient and itsbenefits. Australians, for example, have thehighest levels of awareness in the world ofomega-3, thanks to the local media attentiongiven to the endeavours of Australia’sscientific community in omega-3 research.The Australian consumer is also willing toexperiment (one reason why Australia is apopular test-market for multi-nationals).The Spanish, too, are very willing to try newthings and are the most health-awareconsumers in Europe – so it isn’t surprisingto find that (at least last time we looked)Spain is Europe’s biggest market forDanone’s Actimel probiotic drink. Thesetwo countries’ consumers therefore providefertile soil for new health concepts – and it’sno surprise that the only really successfulomega-3 brands to date are found there.

However, it’s important not to confuseconsumer awareness with motivation topurchase – consumers might be “aware”when asked a market research question, but

connecting that to a desire to pick yourproduct off the shelf is a very, very longroad. What’s more, consumer awareness ofomega-3 might be low in your country. Ineither case that leads us on to the thirdlesson.

Lesson Three: Communications. Thismay seem obvious, but, again and again wehear of companies launching health-oriented products with limitedcommunications budgets and/or incompletestrategies – and then wondering why theysell far below expectation. High consumerawareness alone will not cause anyone tobuy your product – you must communicateto them vigorously – as if they’d never heardof your product before. A modelcommunications effort for a product withomega-3 (or any other health ingredient forthat matter) should include:a) Significant investment in PR to the

consumer press, using scientists andcredible media personalities (everycountry seems to have a celebrity doctorfor example) as spokespersons.

b) Targeted advertising in carefully selectedmedia that is relevant to the audience youare aiming for – TV is essential for themass-market but is too crude aninstrument if you are aiming at the morehighly health-conscious, less price-sensitive “early adopters”. For thesepeople specialized food and lifestylemagazines would be more appropriate.

c) Health professional communications:fronted by scientifically crediblespokespersons and the provision ofinformation and education to dietitiansand nutritionists using websites,information packs, conferenceparticipation and the like.

d) Sampling. People want to have theconfidence that something tastes “goodenough to eat” before they part with theirhard-earned money for a food containingsome new ingredient. In the case ofomega-3 the reason is very simple – fearof fishy tastes. “Dawn Omega Milkinitially met with strong prejudice fromconsumers who couldn’t fathom how youcould intermix fish oil and milk, and nothave a taste of fish oil,” says Paul Byrnes,national sales and marketing manager ofDawn Foods, whose omega-3 milk can be

found on the market in Ireland. Thesolution? Thanks, he says, to “intensivein-store demo-ing we were able to proveto consumers that the taste was equallygood, if not better than ordinary milk.”The lesson that sampling is vital appliesnot only to omega-3 but to every otherproduct and over the last ten years it isone of the strongest and most-repeatedmessages we’ve heard.

Lesson Four: No half-way investment.And what does all this cost? It can’t be doneat bargain prices and your new omega-3launch requires total management backingfor a long-term effort. By way of illustration,the successful omega-3 brand in Australiahad first year backing of $2.2 million (€1.8million) and thereafter a consistent $1million (€825,000) per annum. This was in acountry of 20 million people, so it’s simplearithmetic to work out what you’d need tospend in your own country. Puleva in Spainis tight-lipped about its investment but it’slikely to be even higher.

Finally there’s the question of targeting.In Ireland,Dawn Foods has learnt to targethealth-aware mothers. This group is onethat might be motivated to pay the 50%price premium that Dawn’s omega-3 milkasks. However, unless you are willing totarget specific groups with strongmotivations (Puleva in Spain says it has alsodone this), you’ll find it hard to get the mass-market consumer to pay any premium(hence omega-3 bread in Australia targetingthe mass market sells at zero price premiumto regular bread).

As the UK’s Dairy Crest launches thatcountry’s first omega-3 milk (see page 3) it isclear that it has learnt many of theselessons. What remains to be seen is whetherit can sustain the necessary level ofinvestment in communications (which prorata from the Australian experience wouldbe around $3 million (€2.5 million) perannum). Such expenditure will be all themore necessary because the UK consumerhas thus far proven itself fairly uninterestedin omega-3, with all such products eitherwithdrawn or in small niches. UKconsumers are also as conservative as theSpanish are experimental – and when itcomes to new benefits and ingredients theyneed lots of persuading.

E D I T O R I A LJULY 2005 17


Commitment, communication andsampling key to omega-3 success

E D I T O R I A L18 JULY 2005

Another sad story from Nestlé“Those who cannot remember the past

are condemned to repeat it.” “Those whoignore history are doomed to repeat it.” Itdoesn’t matter which version of GeorgeSantayana’s quote you’re more familiar with,it’s a phrase that springs to mind when lookingover Nestlé’s ten years of efforts to successfullymarket functional ingredients and products inEurope.

Remember Nestlé LC1 Go!, thecompany’s much hyped daily-dose probioticdrink, which Nestle’s 1998 annualmanagement report described as aninnovation “strengthening Nestle’s position inEurope”? LC1 Go! was jettisoned and theLC1 brand failed to achieve market leadershipin Europe – after years of effort and millionsof dollars of marketing investment spentfruitlessly playing catch-up on Danone’s wildlysuccessful Actimel.

Or how about the fact that Nestle – one ofthe world’s biggest dairy groups and boastingR&D facilities that dwarf anyone else in theindustry – has failed to become a player of anysignificance in Europe’s €3 billion daily-doseprobiotic dairy drink market (a market that hasgrown from zero ten years ago) thus leavingthe field to its rival Danone, which long-agoidentified this market as one of the biggestopportunities in fresh dairy worldwide?

Or that Nestlé has almost ceased to be aplayer in the important German dairy marketlicensing its LC1 functional brand to rivalMueller. Danone, faced with the exact samecompetitive issues, such as price competitionand private-label, did not pack up its tents andretreat, but rather, invested in a skilful turn-round operation which saw Danone’s Actimel

functional brand retake market leadershipwithin two years.

Or that in many European countries evensmall local players with a fraction of Nestlé’sresources have out-innovated the company –let’s not forget that another Swiss-based dairy,the tiny Emmi, has produced innovatively-packaged probiotic and cholesterol-loweringproducts that outsell Nestlé in Switzerland andthe other German-speaking countries.

Or how about Calci-N, Nestlé’sproprietary dairy calcium ingredient, expectedby the company to become an ‘Intel Inside’, aspart of Nestlé’s “branded active ingredientstrategy? Calci-N was even given its own logoon products that contained it – however, thelogo has now vanished from Nestlé products inEurope, even from those where the ingredient

continues to be used.So what are we to make of Nestlé’s latest

marketing mis-step – the withdrawal from theGerman market of its Nutrel brand ofnutritional products (see story on page 25)after 18 months on the market, supposedlyafter spending millions of Euros on marketing?It seems that this may have been a simplemarketing blunder – sources claim that theproducts were only distributed via chemistsand drugstores. If this is true, and if Nestléexpected Nutrel to be anything other thanniche when distributed via such a channel(most healthy people go looking for food insupermarkets, after all, not chemists), then it’sa blunder that, coming from a company withunrivalled resources at its disposal, beggarsbelief.

We also note the presence on the Sveltessepack (see story on page 23) of one of Nestlé’smuch-vaunted “branded active ingredients” –called Lineactis, a proprietary blend of fibre,calcium and green tea. But ingredient brandshave to be marketed if they are to have anyconsumer value (see front page story aboutSolae and Howaru stories on pages 28 and29). And this is something that, for itsingredient brands, Nestlé seems not to do inEurope. Indeed, most damning of all, whenwe searched the Nestlé websites, we could notfind a single explanation of Lineactis, no-matter how we searched, or any references toit as a business-to-consumer ingredient brand.How much is being spent on marketing it?The answer to this question, we suspect, maybe little or nothing. So why is it there onconsumer packs? Exactly how does it addvalue? And will it one day go the way of Calci-N?

We wrote in New Nutrition Business inDecember 2000 that Nestlé’s consistent under-performance in nutrition in Europe merited asevere overhaul of the company’s marketingand branding skills. Five years later we findourselves being forced to make the sameobservation. Nestlé still seems to be a companywith a disconnection between its massive R&Dresources – where the highly questionable,science-push, branded active ingredientstrategy likely originated – and the marketingteams. We really question whether Nestlé hasany of the routine exchange of personnel,ideas, experience and concepts that definesDanone’s approach to marketing. And ifNestlé does have such exchanges then we canonly wonder whether Nestlé’s under-performance relative to rivals like Danonepoints to some deeper malaise.


By 2001 Nestle’s European probiotic strategy lookedto be in tatters with its flagship LC1 Go! (a probioticfermented milk drink targeted at digestive health)withdrawn in both France and the UK – two ofEurope’s three biggest food markets. Elsewhere inEurope it was consistently outsold by competitors.Five years on and Nestlé’s nutrition strategy inEurope still seems to be struggling, with the recentwithdrawal of Nutrel in Germany. Meanwhile Nestléapparently persists with a branded active ingredient.

S T R AT E G Y C A S E S T U D YJULY 2005 19


It’s an achievement that any companywould be proud of – a functional brand thatthis year will clock up retail sales of over €100million ($120 million), an almost 100% increasesince 2002, according to one source. The salesof this one brand of omega-3 milk on theSpanish market today account for perhaps50% or more of all the sales of omega-3 milkin the western world. It’s an astonishingachievement in a country with a population of40 million and an unheard-of success for anomega-3 fortified milk. To try and illustrate thescale of Puleva’s achievement, imagine if anAmerican company had made a similarnational success – it would have been looking atannual retail sales of $700 million.

But building a €100 million brand did nothappen overnight – in fact, it has taken sevenlong years of investment and single-mindedstrategic focus. Launched in 1998, PulevaOmega-3 milk is a skimmed UHT milkenriched with oleic acid, 600mg of omega-3EPA/DHA, vitamins E and B6 and folic acid.

Packed in 1-litre Tetrapaks, the omega-3ingredient is supplied by Puleva Biotech, theR&D-intense development company closelyconnected to Puleva Foods.

The brand retails at €1 per litre – a pricepremium of over 40% when compared withthe €0.5-€0.7 retail price of regular milk – andhas a 60% lion’s market share of the functionaland fortified milk segment in Spain. Puleva’sinnovation introduced value-added thinking tothe Spanish dairy sector – in fact, it’s noexaggeration to say that this product more orless created the functional dairy segment of theliquid milk market.

More than 10 years ago, faced withfinancial problems, Puleva Foods made a boldstrategic move by investing in the developmentof value added dairy products. The strategyhas paid off: almost single handedly Puleva hasdeveloped a whole new category of fortifiedand functional milk products on the Spanishmarket that today accounts for about 20%-25% of the liquid milk market and some 65%of Puleva’s €500 million annual sales isgenerated from these nutritional products.Rival, Leche Pascual, comes a distant secondwith a 20% share of the nutritional segmentand Lecheria Asturiana has a considerablyweaker presence.

When first developed the fundamental idea

behind the product was to provide a suitable fatprofile for the lifestyle of the 21st century. Byintroducing a better ratio of monounsaturatedand polyunsaturated fats a clear benefit wasestablished in terms of lower cholesterol levels.

Integrating omega-3 into a product is noteasy, but the Puleva Biotech managers know

the importance of not compromising taste andthe company invested heavily in overcomingthe two main challenges of most omega-3products – taste and stability – since, accordingto the Puleva executives,“Wellness orprevention driven consumers will neversacrifice taste for health benefits. It iscompulsory to have an optimal taste to getsuccess in the long run.” They add that PulevaBiotech keeps working on developing its know-how in this field.

So why has the Puleva Omega-3 milk beenso successful, establishing itself in themainstream market – an accomplishmentseemingly unachievable for most other omega-3 products?

Boza and González offer their ownexplanations: they highlight the long-term and

strategic commitment from management; theysay the brand is important, as well as a well-structured communication strategy which takesinto account different target groups. They addthat there is value in investing indemonstrations of the health benefits throughclinical trials – for instance, it has been clinicallyproven that drinking two glasses of PulevaOmega-3 helps reduce cholesterol andtriglyceride levels – providing a clear benefit forthe price and putting ceaseless effort intoresearching the consumer.

COMMUNICATION AT ALL LEVELS

From the outset Puleva understood the keyrole of good communications in marketingfunctional foods. It knew that the omega-3concept needed effective communication toincrease consumer awareness and knowledge ofits benefits. To achieve this Puleva pursues atwo-pronged strategy:• communication addressed directly to the

consumer through advertising, packaging,brochures and through product sampling,the latter highlighting the company’s focuson developing a product with excellent taste– a crucial factor for product accecptance.

• communications focused on professionals –doctors, heart specialists and other healthcare professionals, as well as biologists,chemists, food technologists, nutritionists andconsumer organizations. Puleva hosts eventsand conferences for health professionals,takes part in scientific fairs, and provideseducation and training for their stakeholdergroups.

Much work in terms of sciencecommunication and consumer education is alsochanneled through the Omega-3 Institute, ascientific unit connected to the PulevaFoundation. Its main objective is to publish andcommunicate the science of omega-3 andother nutritional research. Overseen by anindependent scientific committee made up ofprofessors, scientists and food experts, theOmega-3 Institute attends conferences,arranges training events, conducts surveys andworks with health marketing issues.

Spanish dairy leads world in omega-3A small Spanish dairy has created the biggest omega-3 fortified brand in the western world and one of Europe’s –and the world’s – most-successful functional dairy brands. In an interview with Patricia Wiklund, Managing vice-directorJulio Boza-Puerta and Commercial and Marketing Director Fernando González-Santos of Puleva Biotech revealed theHerculean effort that Puleva has invested in creating a functional food phenomenon.

For a Case Study on the full Puleva range offunctional milks see the February 2004 issue ofNew Nutrition Business.

Australian consumers are well known fortheir awareness and acceptance of omega-3 –in fact Health Focus, the agency that researchesconsumers and their health beliefs in some 32countries – has regularly identified Australiansas having the highest awareness of omega-3 inthe western world. Against that background itisn’t surprising that the world’s second-biggestomega-3 brand can be found in Australia – theTip Top Up Omega-3 brand of GeorgeWeston Foods, which as we reported last month(see pages 23-25 June 2005 New Nutrition

Business) has garnered a 13% share ofAustralia’s mainstream bread market.

Yet despite high consumer awareness ofomega-3, this bread brand is the only successfulmainstream omega-3 product on the Australianmarket. The position of omega-3 fortifiedmilks, for example, of which there are twoproducts on the market from leading brands,remains at a niche level.

Peters Brownes is the number one dairybrand in Western Australia and distributesnationwide via the major supermarket chains.The company was the first on the market inAustralia with an omega-3 fresh milk, underthe Heart Plus sub-brand. Launched in 2003with a fat content of just 1.5%, to appeal toheart- and health-conscious older adults, itcontains 60mg/100ml of DHA and EPA withadded vitamins B6, B12, E, C and folate.

The rival Dairy Farmers group soonfollowed Peters Brownes into the market withits own omega-3 fresh milk under the market-leading and trusted Farmers Best brand.

The Farmers Best product has beenaround since 1992 and has always had a strongassociation with health – it is a reformulatedproduct using monounsaturated fat to replacebutterfat and it is marketed as a heart-healthproposition with endorsement by the AustralianNational Heart Foundation.

“The message you can drink it to yourheart’s content has been part of the advertisingfor many years,” Norm Reynolds, GeneralManager of Research and Development atDairy Farmers told New Nutrition Business.

“Marketing has variously used print media orTV with the latter in the past includingadvertisements featuring Fiona Coote [a well-known heart transplant recipient].”

The omega-3 variant was launched in2003 and conveys the message of omega-3 asone of the most important nutrients for

maintaining a healthy cardiovascular systemand general wellbeing. Slightly lower in marineoils (13.2mg DHA/EPA per100g) comparedwith Heart Plus, 250ml of Farmers Best onlyprovides 6% of what is recommended per dayfor heart-health while Heart Plus provides 30%of daily requirements.

PREMIUM PRICE, NICHE SALES

As elsewhere in the world, omega-3 milksretail at a significant premium to regular milks.

Brownes Heart Plus for example, sells atA$2.36 per litre ($1.82/€1.51), around 40%more than regular milk. Farmers Best isapproximately 20% more expensive per litrethan regular milk, retailing for A$1.99 per litre.

It’s perhaps because of this premiumpricing that – despite Australian consumers’high awareness about the health benefits ofomega-3s, reinforced by public healtheducation and by the heavy communicationsinvestment of George Weston Foods in allmedia in support of its omega-3 bread –Australian sales of omega-3 milk languish. Astriking difference between the milks and thesuccessful omega-3 bread is that the breadretails at exactly the same price as regularbread – the absence of a price premium takesaway the barrier to purchase for mainstreamconsumers.

“The omega-3 milk market is still verymuch a niche market,” explains Greg Shaw,Commercial Manager of Peters Brownes. In2004 Australians bought 1.9 billion litres ofliquid milk, worth A$1.56 billion ($1.20billion/€999 million). Reduced fat milksaccount for 22% of this and omega-3 enrichedmilks only a fraction, with some industrysources reporting them to have less than a 2%market share.

Another problem could be the positioning– although the health benefits of omega-3 oilsextend beyond heart-health, both products arestrongly targeted at the consumer concernedwith heart-health.

“We focus on the functional benefits withrespect to cardiovascular disease,” Greg Shaw,told New Nutrition Business. “Although we areaware of the real and perceived benefits ofomega-3 this remains our focus in the nearfuture.”

As has been demonstrated many times inother categories in other countries, very fewconsumers are willing to pay a price premiumfor a food with heart-health benefits. What’smore, the Australian omega-3 milks haven’thad marketing and consumer educationsupport on the same scale as the country’s

M A R K E T I N G C A S E S T U D Y20 JULY 2005


Omega-3 seeks waysout of its niche

As the UK market sees its first launch of an omega-3 fresh milk (see page 3) we investigate some of the reasonswhy, with the outstanding exception of Spain (see case study on page 19), every other omega-3 milk launchedso far in almost every other country sells in only niche volumes. We ask what companies are doing to break outof the niche. By our correspondents in Ireland,Australia and Germany.

M A R K E T I N G C A S E S T U D YJULY 2005 21


omega-3 bread brand – put simply the dairiesseem to be doing little to build consumerawareness and acceptance.

RE-FOCUS ON WELLNESS AND MUMS

On the other side of the globe, in Ireland,Dawn foods, the dairy division of Kerry Grouphas already learned two lessons about the saleof omega-3 milk: that wellness rather than astrong heart-health positioning might be abetter strategy for a premium-priced omega-3milk and that a heavy investment in marketingand education is critical for success. Theselessons were quickly taken on board whenDawn Foods found only modest sales for itsomega-3 milk after 15 months on the market.

“Dawn Omega Milk initially met withstrong prejudice from consumers who couldn’tfathom how you could intermix fish oil andmilk, and not have a taste of fish oil,” says PaulByrnes, national sales and marketing managerof Dawn Foods.

Thanks, he says, to “intensive in-storedemo-ing we were able to prove to consumersthat the taste was equally good, if not betterthan ordinary milk.” And feedback was

consistent, adds Byrnes: “The milk wasdeemed to be creamier and better tasting thanstandard milk…and it has an extra freshnessbecause we’re producing just one-day old milk.We’re delighted that we now have a base ofconsumers consistently using this product, andobviously there is opinion leadership goingaround, with consumers publicising the benefitsthemselves, or outlining why they’re using it.”

So who are these ‘opinion leaders’? Stepforward, Irish mothers. Recent researchundertaken by Dawn shows, “that mum is thebuyer…and she looks after both child andhusband in terms of health-minding.” This isso important for the product’s future growththat the company has conceived a newmarketing strategy aimed specifically atmothers.

“Our focus, moving forward, is mum,”Byrnes explains. “We feel the product is morepreventative than a cure…and it [buys into theidea of] benefiting all the family from earlystages rather than trying to remedy anydamage at 50 years of age.”

Dawn Omega Milk was launched initiallyas a product “targeted at health conscious

consumers of all ages” – and it remains thecompany’s long-term ambition that the milkshould break out of the niche and become amass market product.

“To really command a significant marketshare, we have to appeal to more families. Wedon’t want to treat [it] as a niche milk; we reallyfeel with the benefits of omega that this is an allround family drink, and going forward we willbe steering our marketing towards that area,”says Byrnes.

NICHE SALES IN IRELAND TOO

Dawn Omega Milk still comes in its twooriginal varieties – full-fat and low-fat. Bothvarieties retail for €1.19 per litre – a 50%premium over other branded milks. Althoughhe declined to give exact figures, Byrnes toldNew Nutrition Business that sales of both productshave pushed Dawn’s brand share of the Irish“fortified fresh milk market to around 20%.”The Irish Food Authority, Bord Bia, estimatesthis market accounted for 7% of the total liquidmilk market in 2003 – worth €33 million ($39.7million) – which would give all Dawn-brandfortified milks sales in the region of €6.6 million

OMEGA-3 MILK ON-PACK MESSAGES

The products mentioned in this article make the following claims on their labels:

Brownes Heart Plus (Australia)

Brownes Heart Plus has been specially formulated to improve the performance of the heart andcardiovascular system as part of a balanced diet combined with regular physical activity.

It does this in 4 ways:

�Marine Omega-3 nutrients lower the blood triglyceride levels and help maintain a regular heart beat.

�Antioxidants (Vitamins C & E) enable the body to use Omega-3 nutrients efficiently by neutralizingharmful free radicals.

�Folate, along with Vitamins B6 and B12, help maintain a good flow of blood through the arteries.

�Low in fat and cholesterol.

All this with the same natural taste and nutritional goodness of calcium rich, regular low fat milk.

Australians eat an average of only 100mg of Omega-3 nutrients daily but we should be consuming at lease210mg daily. You can get this amount of Omega-3 (210mg) by drinking just 260ml of BrownesHeart Plus per day.

One 250ml glass of Brownes Heart Plus also contains 100mcg of folate (50% of the daily RecommendedDietary Intake).

Brownes Heart Plus now makes it easy for you and your family to get the proven benefits of Omega-3 andfolate.

Farmer’s Best (Australia)

Farmers Best, now with the added benefit of Omega 3 DHA in every serve, is a deliciously simple way tolook after your heart.

Omega 3 is one of the most important nutrients for maintaining a healthy cardiovascular system andgeneral wellbeing.

So with the same great taste, no cholesterol and now with Omega 3, there are even more reasons to drinkFarmers Best to your heart’s content.

Dawn Omega Milk (Ireland)

The Healthier Option

Dawn Omega-3 Milk provides you with an easy and enjoyable way to include more of the essential Omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins in your daily diet.

It is widely recognized that, as part of a healthy diet,we all should be consuming more Omega-3 fatty acids.

The Eskimos and Japanese have a diet rich in Omega-3 fish oils. Research has show that a diet rich inOmega-3 is important in maintaining a healthy heart.

M A R K E T I N G C A S E S T U D Y22 JULY 2005


($7.9 million), with omega-3 milks accountingfor most of this number.

According to the nutritionist of one ofIreland’s main supermarket chains, “the sales ofomega-3 milk have been quite slow” in herstores. But it seems that’s all about to change.The innovative technological achievement thatis Dawn Omega Milk has given Kerry a bullishdetermination to seize the initiative whereomega-3 fortified products are concerned.“Our technologists have been inundated withrequests and enquiries regarding thetechnology,” says Paul Byrnes. “We’ve receiveda lot of credit and acclaim from buyers ininternational multiples, looking to bringinnovation to the category. Omega milk haslifted us from the norm of the milk business tobeing innovators, and obviously now we’ll becoming forward with new products.”

CONSUMER EDUCATION AT THE HEART OFSTRATEGY

For example? “We’ve been looking at bothtwo-litre and ‘more convenient’ size formats.”Flavoured milks? “Absolutely. There is other[R&D] work going on with other products,whether they be flavoured milks or juices orwhatever.” How about a soya milk variety?“We know [the Irish market for] soya productsis growing…we’d be looking at a lot of newproduct ideas.” A wide portfolio ofcomplementary omega-3 fortified foods andbeverages under the Dawn brand is seen by thecompany to be “vital to the success of its futurestrategy.”

And it’s this long term vision that’s drivingthe company on. The importance ofeducating the population about the benefits ofconsuming omega-3 is a cornerstone of thecompany’s strategy: “People are still not fullyaware of [its] benefits,” says Byrnes.Awareness of omega-3 and omega-6 may begrowing (thanks largely to Unilever’s Florabrand), “but translating awareness into anunderstanding of its benefits…I wouldn’t saythat we’ve been tremendously successful todate.”

In an upcoming PR campaign, to belaunched in August and running until June2006, Dawn intends to pay a lot more attentionto educating consumers about omega-3. Aswell as targeting retail and trade journals andwomen’s magazines, there’ll be “more directmedia communication, which may involvesome TV.” In-store tastings and shelf-talkerswill be stepped up, and for the first time, thecompany intends to target “more opinionleaders like health professionals, family GPs,nutritionists.”

Dawn Omega Milk packs already carry anendorsement by the Irish Heart Foundationbut, says Byrnes, “On-pack, we’re going to bemore explicit about omega than we have beenin the past…our total focus will be on theomega benefits.” Indeed, the company is soaware of the importance of educating theconsumer first (in order that they becomefamiliar with and accepting of new food-healthpropositions in the longer term) that itsinvestment in this campaign “will be quite

substantial, equal to that of the initiallaunch…it will dominate our marketing budgetfor 2006 in the milk category,” says PaulByrnes.

As has been seen in other markets (seePuleva case study on page 19) long term successor failure will come down to how good Dawn isat educating consumers. The company’sacknowledgement that it’s putting consumereducation first – and on a more targeted,longer term basis than it originally envisageddoing – suggests that it’s had something of areality check since Dawn Omega Milk waslaunched last year. Successful food-healthproducts can take years to break out of theirniches, and their growth is heavily dependentupon consumer awareness, education andacceptance of the product.

OMEGA-3 STILL A TURN-OFF FOR GERMANS

It’s a mistake to think of Europe as one market –the 25 countries have 25 ways of viewing foodand health and while the Spanish are highlyhealth-active (the most health-conscious inEurope according to the Health Focus consumerresearch agency) and willing to accept omega-3s(see page 19) other Europeans reject theingredient.

While probiotic dairy products are very wellreceived in the German speaking countries theomega-3 idea gets too near the purely medicinalfor most Germans, a senior advertising executivewith food industry experience told New NutritionBusiness.The omega-3 idea has a long way to goto be a turn-on for Germans in the way it is forthe Spanish.Organic milk producers in Austriamake much of the claim that their cows’ milkcontains 64% more omega-3 than conventionally-produced milk but, as one source said,“no-oneseems too interested.”

The example of a drinking yoghurt produced bythe prominent Bavarian dairy Bauer – whosebrand is widely known and trusted by consumers– illustrates the challenge. Bauer is a successfulyoghurt producer among the market leaders inGermany for conventional fruit yoghurts and withan interesting line in probiotic products, such asits “Fit & Aktiv” low-fat line.This companyintroduced Doppelherz Vital omega-3 enrichedprobiotic yoghurt drink in 2002 in a variety offruit flavours in a 150g pack. But the productnever really took off and, as their publicity peopleinformed New Nutrition Business, the companystopped producing it in September 2004.

COUNTRY COMPANY BRAND PRODUCT EPA/DHA PRICE PER PREMIUM TODOSE PER 250ML LITRE REGULAR MILK

Australia Peters Brownes Heart Plus 1.5% fat freshmilk 150mg A$2.36 40%

Australia Dairy Farmers Farmers Best 1.5% fat fresh milk 31.25mg A$1.99 19%

Ireland Kerry Dawn 1.7% fat fresh milk 62.5mg €1.19 50%

Ireland Kerry Dawn 3.5% fat fresh milk 125mg €1.19 50%

UK Dairy Crest St. Ivel advance 3.5% fat fresh milk 113mg £0.79 43%

UK Dairy Crest St. Ivel advance 1.5% fat fresh milk 63mg £0.79 43%

Spain Puleva Puleva Omega-3 1.5% fat UHT milk 150mg €1.00 42%

B R A N D I N G C A S E S T U D YJULY 2005 23


Nestlé’s past attempts to marketfunctional dairy products in the UK havebeen plagued by failure, most notably LC1,the company’s “daily-dose” probiotic drink,finally jettisoned by Nestlé in 2003 afterseveral fruitless attempts to catch-up onDanone’s wildly successful Actimel, whichnow dominates the UK’s £120 million($219.4 million/€180.2 million) market fordaily-dose functional dairy drinks, a sectorthat grew over 20% last year. So the recentUK market launch of Nestlé’s Sveltesse 0%Optimise – a dairy-based wellness drinkthat carries the claim that it ‘may help

maximise fat metabolism’ – is interesting forseveral reasons.

First, it shows Nestlé’s continueddetermination to establish a brand that’sgenuinely synonymous with health. TheSveltesse brand (relatively new to the UKbut more familiar to French and Nordicmarkets) already includes low-fat and lowcalorie yoghurts (in 12 flavours) and cerealbars (also low-fat and with less than 100calories). The brand is aimed at “Makinghealthier easier” for consumers(predominantly young women interested inweight management). With theintroduction of Optimise, the company

pushes the “healthier” envelope further byincluding ingredients such as a probioticbacteria, fibre, green tea extract, and26.4% of an adult’s calcium RDA, thelatter communicated on pack as ‘twice as

much calcium on average as probiotic drinks’.And all these benefits are convenientlydelivered in an 88g bottle of cultured milk(in strawberry and pineapple flavours),available from supermarkets across the UKat a cost of £1.99 for a six pack, comparedto £1.62 for a six pack of Muller Vitality

100g bottles of probiotic drinking yoghurtor £2.50 for an 8-pack of Danone’sActimel probiotic.

Second, the marketing of Optimiseappears to show that Nestlé has paidattention to how successful health-orientedbrands have won over UK consumers.

To begin with, there’s the daily-doselittle bottle format – a format that Britishshoppers already associate with health andconvenience, thanks to successful brandssuch as DanoneActimel and Yakult. Theproduct would also appear to have acomplementary fit with others in theSveltesse family, thereby minimising thedanger of cannibalising sales of otherproducts in the Sveltesse range andincreasing the chances that consumers willbuy Optimise in addition to other Sveltesseproducts.

Then there are the health ingredients.The inclusion of a probiotic bacteria (inthis case Lactobacillus paracasei) is testamentto the fact that UK consumers now acceptand trust the concept of ‘friendly bacteria’.This time around, the company isn’t hellbent on blinding consumers with science, asNestlé managed to do with its long-goneLC1 probiotic brand. In fact, there’s nomention of Lactobacillus paracasei by nameon the Optimise ingredients list, marketingliterature or website.

“Yakult had a lot to do with educatingconsumers about friendly bacteria,”Johanna Hignett, Nestlé UK’s Head ofNutrition told New Nutrition Business. “Whenwe first launched LC1, people didn’t wantto talk about bacteria, and to think that youhad them inside you was absolutelygrotesque. But now people have accepted[the concept], the whole market has movedon and evolved, which has enabled us andother manufacturers to evolve ourcommunication along with it.” She sums

up current consumer attitudes as: “‘Theword ‘probiotic’? – fine. Don’t tell me whatit’s all about, I already know it’s good forme’.”

UK consumers are also extremelyfamiliar with both fibre and calcium. Andthe green tea extracts? “Green tea isincluded as a flavour. But it also brings ahealth image. It has lots of healthconnotations,” says Hignett. And with UKsales of green tea rising annually, this couldprove to be a fortuitous and timelyingredient choice.

So does the use of sugar and artificialsweeteners impact on the product’s healthyimage? Hignett explains: “Some peoplehave the view that sugar is natural, and arehappy with that. Others want artificialsweeteners. In this product, because it’slinked to weight, calories are important, sowe chose to use an artificial sweetener tokeep the calories low, whilst maximising thecalcium delivery.”

Sveltesse 0% Optimise enters a marketin which, despite their appreciation of thelink between calcium and health, manyconsumers – and particularly young women– get through less than their recommendeddaily intake. The UK’s Milk Development

Nestlé offers slenderness from calciumThe latest launch by Nestle UK of a dairy product that targets weight management shows that the UK armof the multi-national has taken on board the lessons of its past misfortunes. MARGARET FOLEY reports.

NESTLE SVELTESSE OPTIMISE LABEL CLAIMS

‘May Help Maximise Fat Metabolism*(*Through Calcium)’

‘Studies have shown that dairy calcium can play animportant role in the regulation of fat metabolismand along with a balanced diet and regularexercise may help with managing your weight’

A small on-pack information leaflet adds:

‘Manage your weight with Sveltesse Optimise0%…Recent studies suggest that including dairycalcium in a reduced calorie diet can be moreeffective than cutting calories alone. Calcium playsan important role in the regulation of fatmetabolism…Your metabolism is the speed atwhich your body uses energy from food & drink. Itvaries from person to person, largely depending onyour age, body size & composition. You can helpmaximise your metabolism by:

Regular exercise

Maintaining a healthy weight

Controlling your energy intake

Eating a healthy balanced & varied diet

Avoiding crash dieting

Maintaining a regular eating pattern

Increasing your dairy calcium intake

Council suggests this deficit is due to bothan ignorance of the optimum daily intakelevel, and an avoidance of dairy productsfor weight management purposes in thebelief that all dairy products contain highlevels of fat. With Sveltesse 0% Optimise,Nestlé aims initially to reach out to thesewomen, and then to everyone interested inweight management and healthy diets, bymaking them aware of the growingconnection between dairy calcium and fatmetabolism.

However, warns Hignett, “This isn’t amiracle cure. We’ve been very careful notto overplay the message that if you drinkthis, you’ll lose weight…the mentality ofpeople at the moment is to jump onanything they believe to be a miracle cure –

here we just wanted to say ‘this helps’.”Nestlé UK is aware of the fine line

between information overload and vitalconsumer education. It’s the principalreason that Nestlé’s own Calci-N ingredient– the dairy calcium component used inOptimise – isn’t mentioned by name orlogo (a Calci-N branded ingredient strategyhad already been tried to little effectelsewhere in Europe).

“When you’re trying to communicate amessage, if you start communicating lots ofother messages around it, you dilute the keymessage,” says Hignett, adding: “We’velearned an awful lot about how theseproducts gain their credibility in themarketplace, and about communication.”

So, on-pack messages, literature and the

product website concentrate on tellingconsumers about the growing evidence infavour of dairy calcium as a potentiallyeffective weight management tool, ‘when

combined with a balanced diet and regular

exercise’.However, using relatively new research

results, some researchers would argue thatit could be a little risky to make such claimswhen the scientific jury’s still out on thesubject of a definitive link between calciumand weight.

“One of the key things that goesthrough everything we do, is that it must bescience based,” says Hignett. The productwas over five years in development, shesays, and one of Nestlé’s research professors“worked very closely with ProfessorMichael Zemel [Director of the NutritionInstitute at the University of Tennessee],and the team of Nestlé researchers inSwitzerland continues to monitor andevaluate relevant research.” The companyhas its “scientific dossier of all the researchand scientific reviews” available, she says,adding that, “We believe we cannot belaunching products without having thatbackground.”

COMMENT

With its latest launch, Nestlé UK iscontinuing to pursue the Nestlé global goalof repositioning the company as a leader inthe adult nutrition arena. With SveltesseOptimise the company is taking on less riskthan it did when it launched LC1 back in1998 with the then still-new concept ofprobiotics and the still-new daily-dosepackaging concept. However, it remains arisky proposition for a company whosefunctional products have in the past failed –publicly and expensively – to capture anyshare of the UK’s health market.

But one risk is that with Sveltesse 0%Optimise, Nestlé is once again trying tointroduce UK consumers to a very newconcept – the idea that calcium intake islinked to weight management.

As a new product, under a newishbrand, offering a new proposition, Sveltesse0% Optimise is likely to remain a nichebrand for some time to come. Withpatience, Nestlé UK could make a successof the concept but this might not sit easilywith the parent company’s mass-marketambitions, and in fact too-high expectationsof sales too soon from Nestlé HQ could, wespeculate, be one of the bigger risks toSveltesse’s long-term survival. Time willshow whether Sveltesse 0% Optimiseproves to be the wellness winner Nestlécraves.

B R A N D I N G C A S E S T U D Y24 JULY 2005


SVELTESSE OPTIMISE

Ingredients: Skimmed milk,Water, Strawberry Juice (5%), Maltodextrin, Fructose Syrup, Skimmed MilkPowder, Lactic Cultures, Milk Minerals Concentrate, Stabilisers: Modified Starch, Pectin, Flavouring,Acidity Regulators: Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Green Tea Extract, Sweeteners:Aspartame,AcesulfameK, Colour: Carmines, (Contains a source of Phenylalanine).

NUTRITION INFORMATION

Typical values Per 800g Bottle Per 100g

Energy 121 kJ/ 29 kcal 136 kJ/ 32 kcal

Protein 1.9g 2.1g

Carbohydrate 5.0g 5.7g

of which sugars 4.8g 5.5g

Fat 0.1g 0.1g

of which saturates 0.05g 0.06g

Fibre 2.6 g3.0g

Sodium Trace Trace

Calcium (% RDA) 211 mg (26.4%) 240 mg (30% RDA)

M A R K E T I N G C A S E S T U D YJULY 2005 25


Why do some nutritional products on theGerman and French market simply rocketfrom the starting pad, such as DanoneActimel or Schneekoppe’s probiotic muesli,while others, such as the Nestle Nutrel range,never really achieve lift-off ? This is aquestion many are now asking following thesudden disappearance of the Nutrel range ofproducts after just 18 months.

The lack of customer interest does notappear to be price-based. The Nestle Nutrelenergy products were selling for between€10-€15 ($12-$18) per pack of 12 bars. Thiswas, and still is, on a level with comparableproducts in the same sector.

Nor was the reported slow salesperformance due to lack of promotionalinvestment on the part of Nestle. The launchof the Nutrel range took place at thebeginning of 2004, and at the time, NestléDeutschland chief executive Patrice Bula wasreported to have sunk “millions” into theaccompanying marketing campaign.

Three products were marketed inGermany under the Nutrel banner:• A vegetable juice cocktail in a single-serve

250ml bottle, which was described as theconcentrated equivalent of three helpingsof vegetables – that is, 380g of freshvegetable material. The German Societyfor Nutrition (DGE) recommends a dailyintake of over 630g fresh vegetablesand/or fruit material per day.

• A low-fat muesli bar, Nestle fürSie, aimedat the female consumer and marketed inlemon and apricot flavours enriched withfive minerals and eight vitamins plus 400micrograms of folic acid, representing theRDI for a pregnant or nursing woman.

• Nestle DynaPlus, an energy bar withhighly concentrated oat beta-glucans (theirpresence indicated by the Nestlé-ownedBG-3 ingredient brand on the package).The product is available in apple, apricotand chocolate varieties, of which theformer two are sweetened with fructose.One bar is 23g and contains 1g of beta-glucans. The highly concentrated beta-glucan in the Nestlé DynaPlus bar was

marketed as an ideal source from whichthe time-lapsed and uniform release ofcarbohydrate into the consumer’s bloodstream was possible to give continuousenergy supply. According to Nestlé at thetime of the launch, Nutrel Dyna Plus waspositioned as an energy bar for all activepeople from students to housewives.

Other Nestlé products that includeconcentrated oat beta-glucan and carry theBG-3 logo are sold under the Nesvital brandand have been on the market since 2001 andare currently available in France andGermany. One cereal bar of 25g contains0.75g beta-glucans. In France the Nesvitalbars are flagged as being for weight controland the BG-3 fibres are claimed to “suppressthe craving for food”. Low in fat and calories,with only 74kcal per 23g bar, the packagesuggests that they be used under medicalsupervision.

Health claims for the Nutrel range werecarefully presented so as to attract theattention of the health-conscious German, aconsumer type that traditionally welcomesevery extra vitamin, mineral and probioticbug with open purse.

Professor Ferdinand Haschke chairmanof Nestle Nutrition GmbH, commented at

the time: “Nestle Nutrel stands for healthyand modern products into which have flowedthe years-long know-how of Nestleresearch.”

New Nutrition Business spoke to a foodmarketing expert with one of Germany’slargest agricultural and food organisations,who explained that in Germany, “To becomeaccepted, each new item must score well, asit were, in all aspects of the consumercatalogue. Of course the ‘wellness’ angle hasto be immaculately researched and backedwith easily understood statistics. But at thesame time the taste, the texture, theappearance of, for instance, a fruit yoghurt ormuesli bar has to be optimal, whatever thehealth claims!

“Fail on one single aspect nowadays and,sooner or later, you’re out of the market, nomatter how much money you’ve sunk intomedical research, consumer tasting panels oradvertising campaigns.”

But most in the German market agreethat the Nestlé conception of “intelligentnutrition”, as the company entitled its Nutrelrange back in spring 2004, took a wrong turnby concentrating on retailing in chemists anddrugstores. Nestlé was reported in Germanyas commenting that it had not yet given upon the idea.

Nestlé’s nutrition ambitionscrash in Germany

Last year in Germany a complete new range of nutritional products using scientifically-proven ingredientswas launched as part of Nestle’s “branded active ingredient” strategy. As seems to happen worryingly oftenwith Nestlé’s high-flying, science-based innovations, this one has crashed into the ground. NORMAN DUNN

and JULIAN MELLENTIN report.

I N G R E D I E N T C A S E S T U D Y26 JULY 2005


It isn’t difficult to find ingredientsuppliers who are pursuing strategies ofdeveloping consumer brands for theiringredients – but the number who havesucceeded can be counted on the fingers ofone hand. It’s a strategy that has alreadybeen tried more than once, unsuccessfully,by suppliers of probiotic ingredients. Butone company now seems to be making someheadway.

Paris-based Danisco Cultures, formerlyRhodia, and now part of the Danisco foodingredients business, is seeing a slow butsteady increase in the number of companieschoosing to use its “Howaru” brand, insome cases as an ingredient brand, in othersadopting it is a consumer product brand.

The brand covers a strain calledBifidobacterium lactis HN019, originallydeveloped by the New Zealand DairyResearch Institute and now owned byFonterra, the New Zealand dairy group,from whom Danisco holds the globalmarketing rights under license. Daniscoclaims more than 20 clinical studies showthat Howaru bacteria enhance immunefunction, as well as break down lactose andfight certain pathogens in the body.

Nathalie Brosse, Marketing Support andCommunications Manager for DaniscoCultures, explained to New Nutrition Business

that the company follows a clear strategy oftargeting Howaru at medium-sized dairycompanies and retailers who do not yet havetheir own probiotic brands on the market.

“Most market leaders in the probioticfield, like Danone, have their own strainsand brands,” says Brosse, “but there arecompanies in the second place in mostmarkets who need something to respond tothe major companies with and privatebrands from retailers are also growing.”

In a world in which most retailers havedecided to increase the proportion of their

sales from own-label brands retail clientsrepresent a particularly fertile opportunityfor Danisco, its competitive advantage insupplying them made sharper by the hugesuccess of the Howaru branded products inSouth Africa, where market-leading retailerWoolworth’s uses the Danisco probiotic asan ingredient in an own-label product thatthe retailer has branded Howaru. Launchedin the summer of 2003 the Woolworth’sHowaru brand now includes 118 products

(see case study on page 27) and almostcertainly represents the single largestcustomer and source of profits for theHowaru business.

Danisco has registered the Howarubrand worldwide (the Howaru name is anobvious play on the expression “How are

you?” and was intended to be moreconsumer-friendly than using the name ofthe strain) and it is licensed exclusively foreach country and application.

Danisco ploughs some of the license feeinto local brand promotion in collaborationwith the customer. In South Africa, forexample, Danisco supported Woolworths’launch with conferences for dietitians andhealth professionals and PR to scientific andhealth professional publications. InSlovenia, Danisco helped its local partner todevelop a mailshot and co-funded itsadvertising campaign; in Ghana it helpeddevelop advertorials and participated inconferences for health professionals.

“We are increasingly working closelywith clients on promoting Howaru,” saysBrosse, adding that the Danisco Health &Nutrition Centre, located in Finland,supports the science and health professionalcommunications activities.

Current Howaru partners include, inaddition to Woolworths in South Africa,Soprole, the leading Chilean dairy company,that uses Howaru in its 100g daily-dosedrink; a Japanese dairy group; a NewZealand dietary supplement company; FanMilk, Ghana’s market leader in fresh dairyand Slovenia’s dairy market leader,Ljubljanske Mlekarne.

All these companies use the Howarulogo prominently and the Slovenes launchedtheir brand under the Slovene expressionKako Si? – a direct translation of “How areyou?”

Tiny Slovenia is so far the only countryin the fairly mature European market with aHowaru dairy range – which includes fat-free yoghurts, yoghurt drinks and dairydesserts – but industry sources say UKretailer Marks & Spencer is likely be next,with an own-label range.

Danisco says that most companies haveexperienced a 50% increase in sales afterintroducing Howaru products.

In terms of health claims, “Benefitsaround gut health and immune modulationare the two basic claims we can make withthis strain,” says Brosse, who cites 15 recenthuman clinical studies in support ofHowaru’s benefits. Different partners, ofcourse, communicate these claims indifferent ways. Woolworths, for example,talks about the product, “helping your bodyto help itself,” and “stimulating the functionof the immune system when eaten on aregular basis as part of a healthy balanceddiet.”

Danisco sets sights on probiotic brand

In February 2005 Fan Milk Limited relaunched Yogoonto the Ghanaian market as Yogi Howaru in a150ml and 1-litre pot. The Fan Milk websitedescribes the benefits of Howaru as:

• Improving the digestive process.

• Lowering of cholesterol in the body.

• Enhancing the body’s immune system.

R E TA I L I N G C A S E S T U D YJULY 2005 27


Despite their awesome rise to popularity inEurope and Asia, brand names such as Yakultand Actimel elicit blanks in the South Africanmind and only the nutritionally astute would befamiliar with the term ‘probiotic’. However,South Africa’s premium retailer, Woolworthshas just extended its Howaru own-brand labelrange with the launch of South Africa’s firstdaily-dose probiotic dairy drink.

Key global players in South Africa’s dairyindustry have been upstaged by Woolworths’unveiling of Howaru Plus Daily Defence drink,in Vanilla and Cranberry variants, timed to hitthe shelf at the onset of the southernhemisphere’s winter.

Merchandised in a pack of four at R15.99($2.39/€1.96), each 100ml bottle contains onebillion probiotic bacteria (HN019) supplied byDanisco under the Howaru ingredient brand.Danisco claims more than 20 clinical studies forHowaru’s health benefits (see case study onpage 28).

“We believe this development is longoverdue – South African consumers areincreasingly health aware and this is effectivelya user-friendly, daily-dose of good health forchildren and adults alike. Sales growth alreadyis heartening and beyond expectation,”comments a Woolworths’ marketingspokesperson.

She notes that new functional productsdemand on-going consumer education; futuresleeve packaging will probably incorporatescientific information on probiotics and theirrole in human health. And, she adds,consumers can look forward to “more health-

boosting concepts to come” in the daily-doseformat.

Not only does Woolworths have what isregarded by industry as an exceptionallyinnovative dairy department, with an affluentcustomer base, affording it opportunities thatare off-limits to many competitors in SouthAfrica’s first/third world economy, but it wasalso the first local food producer to adopt an‘Intel’ approach to food development andmarketing – signing a country-exclusivelicensing contract in 2003 with Danisco for itsHowaru probiotic cultures.

Woolworths first ventured into probioticproducts back in 2000 but with little successand the products were scrapped. Some hardlessons were learnt – with the benefit that in itssubsequent Howaru venture, launched in late2003, the retailer has applied those lessons andprofited from them, seeing its yoghurt salesgrowing 100% (in value terms) in two years.

“We have 118 lines to dates on shelf withthe Howaru probiotic cultures – yoghurt anddrinking yoghurt lines, a fermented soya range,two fruit juice lines, an entire cottage cheeserange and the two new Howaru plus drinks,”says Chris Botha, Dairy Technical Manager forWoolworths and the project initiator andchampion of the Howaru range.

This happy scenario can’t be attributed toHowaru alone, consumer health trends andother companies’ product innovation alsoplaying their part: according to AC Nielsen, theSouth African yoghurt market has grown 130%to R1.318 billion ($196.6 million/€162.2million) in value in the year to March 2005.

Howaru is described as “a phenomenalsuccess” by Botha; upscale UK retailer Marks& Spencer is following Woolworths’ lead andwill be launching its own-label Howaru linesunder license from Danisco.

The Howaru project was not an easy sell tomanagement initially and its success hasdepended on an intensive marketing effort:“Howaru has been very well received, but it hastaken education, education and education toreinforce the message,” adds Botha.

The marketing campaign has includedadvertorials, PR, roadshows for healthprofessionals, sampling and point-of-sale, withthe campaign slogan: “Howaru is no longer aquestion, but an answer to improved health”.Focus groups, Botha reports, have revealed

better-than-expected 26% penetration in thetarget market.

One of the major lessons fromWoolworths’ first probiotic exercise, he stresses,was not to sell science or disease but to makethe concept friendly and approachable. Whilethe cheerful ‘how are you’ in the brand namehas abetted this, communication themes areaccessible, such as this excerpt from theWoolworth’s website (www.woolworths.co.za):“Probiotic cultures are the friendly strains of bacteria

found in some yoghurt which, when consumed on a

regular basis, and in sufficient numbers, help restore the

body’s natural intestinal flora balance and therefore have

beneficial effects.”

Consumers, Botha believes, can largely becategorised into two groups when it comes tofunctional foods: those who just want to knowit’s good and healthy to eat, and those whowant to know ‘what is this?’ Most, he adds, fallinto the first category: “These consumers arenot particularly fussed by what’s in the product;all they want is the trust and belief that itincorporates good health, that it’s wise toinclude in their family menu. For those whowant to know more, all the packs detail thecultures, their quantity, and so on.”

The key, he believes, has been a strategynot so much to sell dairy but rather market

lifestyle solutions to which people can relate; tomake health “fun, funky and friendly”.

Several market commentators believewhere Woolworths has ventured in daily-dose,others (Clover-Danone seems the most likely)will be sure to follow, and soon.

Supermarket own label is firstwith daily-dose probiotic drinkBy Brenda Neall

San Francisco gourmet ready meal makerSavvy Faire Lifestyle Cuisine is right nowbasking in the glow of having become the firstcompany to get a low glycemic index approvalfor its complete meals. The approval is the fruitof years of work by its co-founders LindaManaster and Dr. Phillip Tirman, to develophigh-quality frozen meals that use ingredients ahealth-conscious person who knows about and

loves good food would find in their ownkitchen.

Savvy Faire is likely to be the first in itscategory in the U.S. to carry an approved “lowglycemic index” symbol after the GlycemicResearch Institute (GRI), based in Washington,D.C., last month (June) completed humanclinical studies on Savvy Faire LifestyleCuisine, and certified them as “LowGlycemic.” GRI’s Seal of Approval may nowbe used on these Savvy Faire food labels and inmarketing.

Food-lovers Tirman and Manasterdeveloped their lifestyle cuisine in response tothe unavailability of anything on the U.S.market that would allow people to take highquality healthy food to work for lunch or in theevening if they had no time to cook a meal forthemselves.

They also wanted to produce meals thatpeople like them – who are mindful ofmaintaining a healthy weight – could eat witha clear conscience. Intensive research leadthem to low glycemic index diets and theyacknowledge the influence of the work of GIluminaries such as Dr. David Jenkins ofToronto University in influencing theirthinking. Tirman took up low-GI eating andfound that he lost kilos that years of followingconventional low-fat eating advice had failed toshift.

“We felt we had discovered this great secretthat you could eat great-tasting foods and loseweight,” Tirman told New Nutrition Business.

“And it became clearer that it was a greatway to get people off the diet roller-coaster,”adds Manaster.

The pair began with recipes that theyalready cooked at home for friends, choosingas ingredients olive oil, hazelnuts, pine nuts,“And things you don’t normally find in readymeals,” explains Manaster. Only whole naturalfoods with naturally low-GI were selected fortheir recipes so that they were able to puttogether complete meals that were entirelylow-GI. One very good example is theChicken Risotto with barley.

“We thought we’d take a gamble withbarley,” says Tirman, “It’s such a versatilegrain, high in fibre, it improves cardiovascularprofiles in people who eat it regularly and itslow GI.”

The pair got a very enthusiastic responsefrom retailers: “We went through the sciencebehind what we were trying to do and wetalked about the science of low glycemic indexdiets,” says Tirman, “and they got right behind

our products.”In June 2004 Savvy Faire was launched in

North Carolina and northern California inselected branches of Safeway and HarrisTeeter and while the privately-held companyisn’t disclosing its first year sales, distribution isexpanding and the founders are pleased withthe progress so far.

With low glycemic eating getting an ever-higher profile in the media the brand is boundto get an uplift from the publicity there hasbeen in the wake of its low-GI certification.

All six products in the Savvy Faire LifestyleCuisine range underwent clinical trials at theGlycemic Research Institute Clinical HumanTesting Laboratories to determine their bloodglucose, insulin, glycemic index, glycemic load,and fat-storing properties. Every Savvy Faireproduct passed all of the clinical criteria legallyand scientifically required by the FDA for LowGlycemic foods. The products concerned are:• Italian Sausage Scramble • Baja Jack Scramble • Lasagna Florentine • Roasted Chicken • Herb Crusted Chicken • Braised Beef

The Glycemic Research Institute hasunderaken glycemic testing and research fortwenty years and received the first U.S. FederalCertification ever awarded for glycemic testing.GRI conducts clinical studies for the food andnutrition industries worldwide andimplemented the GRI Seal of ApprovalProgram to quantify the beneficial propertiesof low glycemic foods, drinks, pharmaceuticals,and nutraceuticals by clinically testing productsunder a standardized protocol.

Far from San Francisco, in rural England,Sue Gwilliam also has a passion for natural,healthy, high-quality convenient food. Themother of four children, organic farmer’s wifeand professional chef made the leap from paidemployment to entrepreneur in 1996.

C A S E S T U D Y : R E A D Y M E A L S28 JULY 2005


Naturally wholesome and healthymakes for ready-meal success

Only four or five years ago you would have had no difficulty stumbling over predictions that we would bynow all by eating ready meals brim-full of omega-3, lycopene, lutein or cholesterol-lowering plant sterols.The ready meal category was often cited as one that could combine convenience with functional foods. Infact this highly competitive category has gone in quite a different direction and the emphasis is increasinglyon naturally and intrinsically healthy propositions, with less fat and more wholesome ingredients. FromAmerica to the UK a host of health-oriented niche companies have sprung up in this market.We interviewedtwo such companies. Reporting by JULIAN MELLENTIN and MARGARET FOLEY.

Only whole natural foods

with naturally low-GI were

selected for their recipes so that

they were able to put together

complete meals that were

entirely low-GI.

Organic meals, conceived by Sue and cookedin her kitchen and made with home growningredients, were already staples of familymeal times in the Gwilliam household. Soon,Sue was selling her products – sixty lines –from the farm shop in Shropshire, one ofEngland’s most rural counties. Nine years on,the Get Real brand of organic and meat-freepies and ready meals are available from chillercabinets all over the UK and Ireland. Fromindependent health food outlets to some of thelargest multiple retailers and health stores inboth countries, Get Real foods have attracted aloyal, growing fanbase.

Whereas in 1996 the company’sAmbledown Pie was an immediate hit with‘hungry vegetarians’, today the brand ispopular across the board, including amongmeat eaters.

In addition to being certified organic bythe UK’s Soil Association, the products areinnately healthy – low fat, low salt, wheat-free– and they have gone beyond the ready meal‘norm’ in terms of recipes. From its award-winning Ambledown Pie (which containsgroats), to its Sutaki Pie (arame seaweed, mungand aduki beans), the company is not afraid toexperiment with recipes, ingredients and tastes.

Product ideas come from Gwilliam, butare based on what her customers want; indeedthe company’s low-fat and low-saltformulations were developed specifically at therequest of customers, as were the roasts andbakes formats. The company’s latest offering,the Tuscan Bake – with its extra virgin olive oiland Kalamata olives – is also a direct responseto those who appreciate both Mediterranean-style food and the health benefits of theMediterranean diet.

The Get Real product range appeals totime-strapped consumers who are too busy toprepare nutritious home-cooked mealsthemselves. Each pie or ready meal provides atleast two and a half vegetable portions of aperson’s 5-a-day recommended daily fruit andvegetable allowance, which makes themparticularly attractive to working parents. The5-a-day message is one that’s appeared on GetReal packaging “from the beginning.”Explains Gwilliam, “I think it’s important thatpeople know as part of their diet how ourproducts help them to meet their dailyrequirements…how eating our foods reallydoes give them that daily ‘food fix’.” Andgiven the growing concern about children’sfood-health, it’s no surprise to learn that GetReal is planning to develop a family ofproducts aimed specifically at children.

Get Real products may be healthy andconvenient, but they also taste good enough tohave helped make the brand an establishedname, even in the mainstream grocery sector,

where it shares space with the likes of theLinda McCartney vegetarian brand. Suepoints out that because of her previousexperience as a chef and the fact that hercompany is very much a small, ‘hands-on’family enterprise, the company has a luxurynot afforded to many large food producers,

and can therefore produce what she calls ‘chef-based recipes’. From her experience, manylarge food companies manufacture productsthat have been developed by technicalpersonnel, who are “more concerned with

putting mixtures of ingredients throughmachinery”. All the Get Real products aremade “like you’d want to make them at home;we DO roast our vegetables, we DO marinateour vegetables…it’s very much ‘hands-on’.”

In addition to its current listings with thehealth-orientated Waitrose supermarket chain,Holland & Barrett health stores, the Fresh andWild organic stores, and many independentdelicatessens and organic retail outletsthroughout the UK and Ireland, the companyis being courted by Sainsbury’s, the thirdlargest UK supermarket chain, a chain keen tochampion the cause of healthy eating. Thechain is especially interested in home-sourcedproducts, and is realistic enough to accept thatthe majority of these products are supplied bysmall businesses like that of the 12-man GetReal operation, rather than larger foodmanufacturers. Sainsbury’s might also beinterested to learn that the company isconsidering entering the school meals marketin the future.

Despite these potentially enormousdevelopments, almost ten years of business in aniche market sector have made Sue pragmaticin her approach to growing her business.“We’re not into taking big steps”, she says.“It’s important that people know about us.”To this end, she hopes to exhibit her productsat more trade shows in the future. As it is, thecompany advertises in health magazines, and isbeing increasingly approached by a media thatrecognises Get Real as “spearheading [healthy]products and the way people are thinking”about food and health. And without a trace ofirony, Sue concludes, “Well, we’regrowing…organically.”

C A S E S T U D Y : R E A D Y M E A L SJULY 2005 29


Savvy Faire Lifestyle Cusine’s entire range of ready meals was recently certified as low-glycemic index.

The Get Real range appeals to

time-strapped consumers who

are too busy to prepare

nutritious home-cooked meals.

Each pie or ready meal provides

at least two and a half vegetable

portions of a person’s 5-a-day.

C O M M U N I C AT I O N S C A S E S T U D Y30 JULY 2005


Established to promote dental health,Toothfriendly International is a non-profitassociation based in Basel in Switzerland. Itwas founded in 1989, building on theexperience of national initiatives with similarmissions (Switzerland 1982; Germany 1985).The association’s main function is to licensethe Happy Tooth registered trademark toconfectionery manufacturers producingchewing gums, mints, lollipops, chocolate orother sweets that are not harmful to teeth. Inorder for products to carry the logo they haveto be scientifically tested and proven to bewithout significant cariogenic and erosivematerial. Based on the measurement of thepH of dental plaque and saliva, the test is astandardized one carried out by threeappointed independent university institutes.

Depending on the volumes and territory ofsales, the license fee varies. Today 59confectionery firms use the logo on 92 brands,covering a geographical area of some 40countries. For example, in Switzerland, whereawareness of the Happy Tooth logo is high,90% of chewing gum products carry the logoand by value, 40% of the confectionery marketis represented by Happy Tooth markedproducts. In addition to confectionerycompanies, two toothbrush manufacturers –Banat and Oral-B – are entitled to the logobecause they are supportive partners in thesocial programmes carried out byToothfriendly.

Executive Director of the ToothfriendlyFoundation, Dr. Albert Bär, explains thatToothfriendly International works with thegeneral public, health professionals and theindustry. For consumers the logo serves as areliable guide to toothfriendly confectionery;for dentists it offers a means for providingpositive dietary advice about confectionery topatients, and for the confectionery industry, thelogo represents a quality mark that helpscommunicate the product’s and the company’sengagement for better dental health.

A VALUE SHIFT FROM SUGAR-FREE TOTOOTHFRIENDLY

Chewing gum is the dominating categoryapplying the logo, due to its strongly developed

sugar-free proposition. “During the past 20years the perception of chewing gum haschanged significantly from having hadsomething of a junk food image to being ahealthy product today”, says Dr. Bär.According to Bär, the turning point wasreached around the time xylitol made abreakthrough and Wrigley launched sugar freeproducts. “The proposition that emergedwas about caries prevention and dentalhealth”. Today sugar free products havebecome more or less a requirement formany brands and Dr. Bär gathers that theindustry is preparing itself to leverage theestablished health proposition of chewinggum to other candies too. He saysfunctional candy is still an untappedmarket to be explored. He is especiallyexcited about new toothfriendly bulkingredients recently brought to market likeisomaltulose (Cargill-Cerestar, Palatinit)and D-tagatose (Arla Food Ingredients).These are however both sugars and cantherefore not carry the sugar free message.He feels that the alternative proposition isto profile as ‘toothfriendly’, productscontaining these ingredients. And here,being a strong and easily understood symbol,the Happy Tooth presents a greatcommunication tool. He says: “Candy istechnically an easier and more interestingconcept for dental health than chewing gum.Emphasizing its wide variety of possibilities, hesays candy can be functionalized. “It will bethe next market to learn the lesson”.

LITTLE TEETH NEED BIG FRIENDS

Established last year, the ToothfriendlyFoundation functions as the charitable arm ofthe association. It carries out preventionprogrammes in less developed countries. Dr.Bär says especially important are those areaswhere sugar consumption is increasing due tomore westernized consumption behaviour, butdental services are still unavailable. “Cariespose a serious problem”, he adds. “Thecombination of poor oral hygiene andexpanding sugar consumption is particularlyharmful”. The foundation obtains its moneypartly from sweetener and ingredients

manufacturers, partly from licensing thetoothfriendly logo. Major contributors areCargill-Cerestar, Palatinit and Roquette Frères.Dr. Bär also adds that “by contributing to theFoundation’s programme, confectionerymanufacturers like Cadbury, Perfetti andChupa Chups demonstrate their socialengagement in caries prevention.”

Launched in 2001, a social programmeaimed at preventing dental caries in Turkishchildren is the flagship of the foundation. Thisfirst programme – Disler Yolunda – hastargeted children from underprivilegedfamilies. The mission is to integrate practicaland regular dental health education in theschool programme. Thousands of childrenhave gained knowledge on dental health, andhave learned how to use a toothbrush andtoothpaste correctly, as well as how to preventcaries by eating a healthy diet. The foundationprovides educational material and trains theeducators. Volunteering dentists provide freedental treatment to children from the mostneedy families. The programme’s primarymethod is to teach the teacher, in this waychildren learn about healthy dental habitsfrom someone they trust. Dr. Bär stresses theimportance of these social programmes.Caries are a preventable disease that can betackled by dental health education andcommunication.

Instantly recognized and understood:The Happy Tooth

In a world in which companies struggle to find instantly-recognisable symbols to guide consumers to healthierbrands – and research shows that shoppers, too, would find life easier if there was a symbol for healthy eatingthat they could trust – the red and white logo with a smiling tooth under an umbrella is a model example ofeffective, globally-recognised health communications. PATRICIA WIKLUND reports.

N E W P R O D U C T SJULY 2005 31


FUNCTIONAL & HEALTHY EATING NEW PRODUCT LAUNCHESEach month we summarise recent new product launches from around the world.• Part 1 and 2 USA • Part 3 and 4 Rest of the World

American new product roll-out information is a custom-made report provided for New Nutrition Business exclusively by Marketing IntelligenceService Ltd. They can be contacted at:

Marketing Intelligence Service,Ltd.6473D,Route 64Naples,New York 14512-9726 USATelephone:Phone: (585) 374 6326 Fax: (585) 374 5217E-mail:[email protected] comprehensive productscan database can be visited atwww.productscan.com

Company Brand Description

PART 1 USA – FOODS AND BEVERAGES

BEVERAGES

Nestle USA, Inc. Nesquik Nesquik Liquid Syrup with Calcium in Chocolate and Strawberry varieties the kid-oriented products are “a delicious way to help build strong bones!” They are said to provide 33% more calcium than milk alone.

Dean Specialty Foods Group Borden Cremora Non-Dairy Creamer.The Original variety has been reformulated. One serving provides “6 percent RDI for vitamin E (an antioxidant), 125mcg of lutein, 0g trans-fatty acids, no cholesterol and no lactose.”

Kraft Foods, Inc. Fruit2O Plus10 Bottled flavoured water. Literature for the product reads, “Fruit2O Plus 10 is a delicious new line of flavored water fortified with 10 vitamins and minerals, including vitamins B6, B12, C, E, niacin and zinc...(They) contain no calories, 0g carbohydrates per serving and no carbonation.”

Cole Water Co. Cole Bros. Drink Posi+ive New Cole Bros. Drink Posi+ive Natural Calcium Bottled Water is said to contain easily absorbable calcium and to be naturally high in “magnesium, fluoride and other minerals that are essential to good health.”

Naked Juice Co. Naked Food Juice The new line of Naked Food Juice Quenchers is available in single-serve, resealable, 15.2fl.oz. square plastic bottles and in 64fl.oz. bottles. Flavours include Lemonade Stand, Strawberry Sour Power and Cool Time Lime. Promotional literature states, “Super premium lemonades, made with real fruit and 90 percent juice ormore! All-natural – No added sugar – No preservatives – No additives or colors.”

Mott’s, Inc. Mott’s Plus for Kids’ Health Juice Promoted as “specifically fortified with the entire family’s health needs in mind.” Mott’s Plus for Kids’ Healthis “100 percent Juice (and) is fortified with 100 percent of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C,10 percent vitamin A, and 10 percent calcium.” Presented in a resealable bottle, “it has no added sugar and isnaturally fat free, cholesterol free and is low in sodium.”

Mott’s Inc. Mott’s Plus Light Beverage “Sweetened with Splenda brand sweetener,” Mott’s Plus Light is said to be naturally fat free and cholesterol free and to contain 50% juice. Literature identifies it as “a new Apple Juice beverage made for adults who love the refreshing taste of apple juice, but are counting calories and sugar.” It is claimed to have half the calories and sugar of regular 100% apple juice and to be fortified with a full day’s supply of vitamin C, 20% vitamin D and 10% calcium.”

Knudsen & Sons, Inc. R.W. Knudsen Simply Vita Cranberry,Vita Blueberry and Vita Pomegranate are new varieties of R.W. Knudsen Simply Nutritious Nutritious Juice Juice. Sold in glass bottles, they are said to contain 100% vitamin C and are good sources of calcium.

Langers Juice Co. Langers Juice Cocktail Langers Pomegranate Juice Cocktail has been introduced in 16fl.oz. and 64fl.oz. plastic bottles. Pomegranate Cranberry and Pomegranate Blueberry varieties are also available.

Hain Celestial Group Mountain Sun Two new unsweetened Mountain Sun Fruit Juices have been introduced. Pure Blueberry is said to be pressed from sun-ripened fruit with no added sugar. Literature promotes it as “sensationally refreshing and bursting with antioxidant power (and) a good source of potassium.”

Naked Juice Co. Naked Food Juice Antioxidant Mango Acai Drink. Promotional literature reads, “Acai palmberry is considered nature’s most nutritious fruit! Contains 50 percent more antioxidant power than pomegranates! Naturally loaded with iron, calcium, & Omega’s -6 & -9. Good source of fiber.”

Gluek Brewing Co. Guadalupe Fun & Wellness These beverages are said to contain coenzyme 10, folate, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, thiamin and Beverages vitamin B6 and to have no calories or carbohydrates.

Texmac Inc. Jellins Reduce Gel Drink Jellins Reduce Gel Drink in a Grape flavor, is sold in a resealable, single-serve, 4.5fl.oz., stand-up laminate pouch that is flagged, “Serve chilled – Formulated for efficient weight control – Fortified with amino acids – Fat free – Cholesterol free.” Promotional literature reads, “Jellins Reduce is a great new diet gel drink formulated with natural grape juice and 4 different amino acids for efficient and nutritious body weight control. No artificial colors – No artificial sweeteners – No artificial flavors – No preservatives – Non-carbonated.”

BREAD

Bimbo Bakeries USA Inc. Mrs. Baird’s Harvest Selects 100% Whole Grain is a new variety of Mrs. Baird’s Harvest Selects Bread. Said to offer the health benefits ofBread whole-grain, it’s a “good source of calcium and dietary fiber, low in fat, and contains eight essential vitamins

and minerals.” Alvarado St. Bakery Essential Flax Seed Bread 100% Sprouted Whole Grain Essential Flax Seed Bread is said to have 4g of protein, organic flax seeds, 50

calories per slice, all natural fiber, 1g of sugar per slice, no trans-fats or hydrogenated oils, to be low in fat and sodium, to be sweetened with organic fruit, certified organic and kosher (parve), 100 percent vegan andto be a great source of Omega-3 and -6.

LaTortilla Factory LaTortilla Factory Wraps These tortilla wraps are said to be made with only pure, unfiltered EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) and real onion juice which “means the wraps contain the antioxidant Quercetin, while the Tomato Basil Wraps have the powerful antioxidant, Lycopene.”

CEREALS

Kashi Sales LLC Kashi Mighty Bites Kashi Mighty Bites Cereal is targeted toward kids.The Cinnamon and Honey Crunch flavors are sold in boxes that are flagged, “The nothing artificial whole-grain cereal – Fiber & calcium for a growing body – Unique blend of nutrients for developing minds.” They are said to contain fiber, calcium and protein, along with a unique blend of choline, iron, zinc and vitamin C.

Kendy USA LLC Kendy Figure Fine Kendy Figure Fine Muesli & Probiotic Cereal package text reads, “11 vitamins – 6 minerals – Kendy Figure Fine is a new concept for functional nutrition.The unique combination of oats, fruits and probiotics (Lactobacillus Bulgaricus) has been especially created to fill your body with strength and energy. (It) suppresses the feeling of hunger, regulates the bowel microbial flora and stimulates the immune system.

N E W P R O D U C T SJULY 200532


Figure Fine, a light and tasty meal (238kcal)... Helps reduce weight and body fat; Reduces the cholesterol;A product with no preservatives or genetically modified substances.”

Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. Wegmans Toasted Oats Toasted Oats Wholegrain Cereal, “made with real strawberries, blueberries and raspberries,” is promoted inWholegrain Cereal literature as “lactose free, vegan, low-fat, and a good source of 13 essential vitamins and minerals, including

iron.” The Cereals are also said to contain “heart healthy soluble fiber.”Hain Celestial Group Arrowhead Mills Cereal With Real Cranberries and presented in a box flagged, “Naturally nutritious,” the vegan Cereals include

Kamut Flakes “made with organic Kamut,” and Spelt Flakes “made with organic Spelt.” Literature states,“Now you get both the nutrition of ancient whole-grains and the healthful benefits of cranberries in one deliciously energizing bowl.”

Enjoy Life Natural Brands, LLC Perky’s New Perky’s 100% Natural Nutty Flax Whole Grain Crunchy Cereal is flagged, “100 percent natural – Gluten & nut free – 1200mg Omega-3’s – 7g fiber – Sweetened with fruit juice & honey.” FRUITS & Ocean

Spray Cranberries, Inc. Ocean Spray Craisins Sweetened Dried Cranberries are promoted in packaging as a “fat free snack,” Ocean Spray Craisins Sweetened Dried Cranberries come in a new Strawberry Flavor.They are presented in a 170g plastic stand up pouch.

Dole Food Company, Inc. Dole Frozen Fruits Sold in resealable 16oz. (454g) plastic bags in Whole Strawberries, Sliced Peaches, Blueberries and Mixed Berries varieties.The labels are flagged, “Field fresh flavor – Picked ripe – Fresh frozen.” All of the products are said to have no added colors, no artificial flavors and no added sugar.

MEAL REPLACEMENTS AND SPECIAL DIET FOODS

PowerBar Inc. PowerBar Pria Introduced in 4-packs of 11fl.oz. (330ml) aseptic drink boxes, “Designed to be consumed any time of day as a nutritious and satisfying meal replacement or snack option, the PowerBar Pria Complete Nutrition Shake is an indulgent-tasting, 170-calorie drink created with specific nutrition for women. It provides a balanced blend of carbohydrates, protein and 21 vitamins and minerals, including 28 percent of the recommended daily value of fiber and 50 percent of the recommended daily value of calcium, and is free of trans-fats and artificial flavorings.The PowerBar Pria Complete Nutrition Shake offers 50 percent less sugar, more fiber and fewer calories than the leading regular weight loss shake.”

DAIRY AND DAIRY SUBSTITUTES

Naked Juice Co. Naked Food Juice Protein Vanilla Chai (organic soy milk, vanilla, black tea and spices) and Chocolate Karma Drinks (organic soy milk and cocoa) are now available. Bottles are flagged, “20g soy protein per bottle.” Each beverage serving is said to contain as much calcium as milk, to have 100% DV of vitamins B6 and B12, 25% DV of folic acid and to below in calories and fat.

Kikkoman International, Inc. Kikkoman Pearl Organic According to literature, “all Pearl products start with soymilk made from whole organic soybeans and Soymilk feature blends of organic and natural flavorings like vanilla and imported green tea powder.” Package copy

reads, “USDA organic – Calcium enriched – Vitamin enriched – Lactose free – Heart healthy – Contains 7g soy protein per serving.”

SPREADS & CONDIMENTS

Laguna Tuna Laguna Tuna Gourmet Spread is said to be an all-natural blend of fresh white tuna, tomatoes, capers,cornichons, extra virgin olive oil, herbs and spices. Literature states, “Full of cancer fighting Omega-3 – Heart healthy lycopene – Extremely low in carbohydrates – All natural ingredients – Gluten free!”

SNACK BARS

Promax Nutrition, Inc. Promax New Oat-Rageous Nutritious Whole Grain Protein Bars are sold in individual 80g wrappers.They are said to have the healthy benefits of foods like oatmeal and whole-grains combined with high quality protein.

Kashi Sales LLC Kashi Go Lean Roll New Kashi GoLean Roll! confections are available in individual 1.94oz. (55g) plastic wrappers.The labels are tagged, “Designed to help you stay satisfied – Optimized glycemic response.” GoLean Roll! “is optimized by the type of carbohydrates and unique combination of protein and fiber. GoLean Roll! contains whole-grains,nuts and low glycemic carbs to deliver a steady stream of energy, helping you avoid sugar spikes and crashes. (It) is high in protein.”

Kettle Valley Dried Fruit Co. Frunola High Fiber Fruit Bar with real fruit, Plum Cranberry, Cherry, Blueberry and Cranberry-Raspberry varieties.Wrappers are flagged, “2 servings fruit in every bar.” They make all natural, low fat, no sugar added and low glycemic food claims. Each bar is said to contain 7g of dietary fiber including 2g of SunOpta oat fiber and 2g of Nutraflora FOS.

Kettle Valley Dried Fruit Co. Kettle Valley Real Fruit Bar, “Suitable for low GI diets (low glycemic)”, these bars are said to contain 100% real fruit, to be low in fat and high in fiber, to contain no preservatives, no artificial colors or flavors, to be 100% natural, to have 100% DV of vitamin C and to have 2 apples in every bar.

Solo GI Nutrition Inc. Solo GI Low Glycemic Weight Management Sustained Energy Bars “contain a special combination of carbohydrates,protein, dietary fat and fiber that provides sustained energy and hunger satisfaction, without an energy ‘spike and crash’.”

TEA

Ito En Inc. Ito En Teas Lemongrass Green (pure green tea with lemongrass) and Rose Green (pure green tea with rose petals) are new varieties. Label copy for each states, “All natural – Unsweetened – No carbs. No calories. Natural tea antioxidants.” These teas are said to have “natural ‘catechin’ tea antioxidants.”

Ito En Inc. Ito En Sencha Shot Japanese Available in a single serving 64fl.oz (190ml) metal can, it contains 152mg of Catechin tea antioxidants.Green TeaLiterature reads, “All natural – Packed with Catechin natural tea antioxidants.”

VEGETABLES & VEGETABLE SIDE DISHES

Sea Tangle Noodles Co. Sea Tangle Mixed Sea Vegetables, the label is flagged, “High in calcium and iron – Known to promote thyroid function – Beneficial for dieting and skin support – Ideal for weight-conscious diets – Ideal for mixing with Kelp Noodles or rice – Delicious hot or cold.” Sea Vegetables “are a tasty and great source of fiber, calcium, iron,potassium, magnesium and iodine.”

Lyflo Select Lyflo Select Supplement The new Lyflo Select Supplement line “offers 10-unique comprehensive formulas to best support your optimum health.” Bone Complex is said to contain a precise blend of premium calcium with vitamin D3,magnesium and soy isoflavones to improve absorption of calcium for strong, healthy bone density. Joint Complex “helps lubricate and restore the health of your joints with a premium blend of liquid glucosamine,chondroitin, MSM and vitamin C.” Other supplements in this line include Inflammation Defense, Cardio Defense with Policosanol, Cholesterol Defense with Soy Phytosterols, Respiratory Support, Sleep Harmony,Digestive Harmony with Probiotics and Daily Fiber.

PART 2 USA – DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS

N E W P R O D U C T SJULY 2005 33


Spectrum Organic Products, Spectrum Essentials Norwegian The new Spectrum Essentials Norwegian Cod Liver Oil in a Plain Liquid form is is flagged, “No mercury – Inc. Cod Liver Oil, PCBs – Lead – Molecularly distilled – 540mg DHA/340g EPA per serving – Wild caught

from Norice waters – 1.2g Omega-3 per serving.” The 520mg Softgels are said to deliver 0.5g Omega-3 per serving.

Bayer HealthCare LLC Bayer One-A-Day Cholesterol Plus with Policosanol Tablets are described as “Complete multivitamin that helps maintain healthy cholesterol levels and blood pressure levels already within the normal range... Policosanol (a natural extract derived from sugar cane) – a unique ingredient that can help maintain healthy cholesterol levels... One-A-Day Cholesterol Plus with calcium and folic acid can help maintain healthy blood pressure.”

Bronson Laboratories Bronson Oat-Vantage Oat-Vantage, is “a highly concentrated oat bran (oat beta-glucan)” that is said to be kosher certified, an all natural food ingredient and to be non-GMO. Bronson’s OatVantage Supplement Capsules are “the ideal supplement to your diet because it provides an effective and easy way to help meet the FDA recommendation of 3g of oat beta-glucan per day to help lower cholesterol.”

Puritan's Pride. Puritan’s Pride OatVantage Sold in a 60-count bottle, OatVantage is “a highly concentrated oat bran (oat beta-glucan),” is said to be kosher certified, an all natural food ingredient and to be non-GMO.This product is claimed to provide 3gof this soluble fiber from whole oats.

GNC GNC Natural Brand OatVantage This supplement “provides dietary support for normal, healthy cholesterol and blood glucose levels.”Sports Research Corp. Wild BlueBerry IQ Softgels Wild BlueBerry IQ Softgels, in a High Potency Antioxidants Made with Whole Fruit formula. Literature

states, “(The) softgel contains the highest levels of ‘all natural’ anthocyanin antioxidants without adding or extracting any nutrients. Laboratory testing proves that using the skin and pulp of the wild blueberry significantly increases the milligrams of anthocyanin antioxidants in a single serving. One Wild Blueberry IQ softgel contains over 90 percent phytonutrients found in 1/2 cup of whole wild blueberries, but without thecalories!” The health benefits of wild blueberries are said to include promoting healthy brain function,fighting against free radicals, helping to improve vision and promoting urinary track health.

BABY FOOD

Indonesia PT Arnott’s Indonesia Biskuit Bayi Baby biscuits with DHA and prebiotic action. Specially formulated for babies from the age of six months, they are enriched with calcium.

BAKERY

UK Warburtons Sliced Sandwich Rolls A pack of six sliced sandwich rolls, said to be high in fibre and energy.This product is claimed to be low in fat and sugar and suitable for vegetarians. It has a lower glycemic index than other white breads.

Australia Quality Bakers of Energy Plus Grain Oat & Energy Plus bread with grain, oats and honey is said to be rich in grain carbohydrates,Australia Honey Bread naturally low in fat and a natural source of protein. It is claimed to be a winning combination of

kibbled grains, oats and honey which delivers 760kJ per serving to help provide fuel for active people.Israel Carmel Matzos Matzo Light Bran Low GI bran bread which is also kosher. It contains high levels of fibre and one unit of carbohydrate

per slice.

BEVERAGES

Austria Teekanne Jungbrunnen - Fountain New under the Teekanne brand is Jungbrunnen, claimed to provide harmony to body and soul, to be of Youth Herbal Tea purely natural and to provide a feeling of youth. Comprising a variety of herbs such as green tea,

gingko, aloe vera, melissa and lemongrass with ascribed effects such as strengthening, harmonising and refreshing and spirulina algae, this tea is claimed to be a ‘cup of pure wellbeing’.The 40g pack contains 20 x 2g teabags.

UK Boots Still Citrus Rehydration A citrus flavoured sports rehydration drink with sweetener and vitamins to aid a busy lifestyle or Drink exercise. It contains only 10 calories per 500ml bottle.

France Nutrition & Santé Fresh Fast Hydration Isotonic Drink Powder to be mixed with water to make a fast hydration isotonic drink, with magnesium, calcium and electrolytes. It helps replace minerals lost through perspiration when participating in sports activities.According to the manufacturer, the cap can be used as a measure. Onemeasure of the powder should be poured into the drinking bottle, topped up with water and shaken to mix.This product is available in a 400g pack including a drinking bottle with a pull up drinking spout.The powder is sufficient for five litres of beverage.

South Africa Woolworths Probiotic Orange Juice Orange juice with probiotic cultures added.UK The Active Vodka Co Vodka Range A range of vodka, including: Red Vodka which is enhanced with creatine, d-ribose, natural caffeine and

guarana, and Blue Vodka which is enhanced with natural chamomile, elderflower and hops.They are made exclusively from English wheat, fermented using only natural yeast and distilled five times to ensure ultimate purity.They have 41.25% ABV. Each product is available in a 500ml bottle.

Japan Ajinomoto General Cafe Au Lait with Coffee A FOSHU-approved product, this is a pack of 10.5g x 8 sachets of coffee concentrate with milk and Foods Oligosaccharide sugar, formulated with mannobiose to condition intestines.The company claims that two cups a day for

two weeks will double the bifidobacterium count in the intestines.Italy Parmalat Fruit Drink A fruit drink with added vitamin E and Q10 coenzyme in a 1-litre pack.The product is available in two

flavours:Arancia & Mango, orange and mango; and Pesca & Guava, peach and guava.

BREAKFAST CEREALS

Philippines Kellogg Oat Bran Flakes & Oat Lightly sweetened toasted oat bran flakes and crunchy oat clusters with potassium.They Clusters Cereal are low in sodium and contain ingredients that can help lower blood pressure and cholesterol.The

cereal is claimed to contribute to a healthy heart. Available in a 431g box.Singapore The Quaker Oats Co Old Fashioned Oats Quakers oatmeal cereal is claimed to help reduce cholesterol and is made from 100% natural whole-

grain.

CONFECTIONERY

UK Tesco Chocolate Bars A low glycemic index chocolate bar available in: Chocolate & Hazelnut; and Chocolate & Caramel.Theyare packed in a 58g bar retailing at £1.65.

PART 3 REST OF THE WORLD – FOOD & BEVERAGE

Country Company Brand Description

New product information for Rest of the World is sourced from Mintel’s GNPD (Global New Products Database), which can be visited atwww.gnpd.com. Mintel can be contacted at 18-19 Long Lane, London EC1A 9PL, U.K.. Tel. +44-(0)20-7606-4533, Fax +44-(0)20-7600-3327.

N E W P R O D U C T S34 JULY 2005


DAIRY

Finland Alpro Raspberry & Vanilla A raspberry and vanilla flavour soya yoghurt, with raspberry pieces, calcium and bacteria cultures.This Soya Yoghurt product is 100% vegetarian, lactose-free and cholesterol-free. Each pack contains 4 x 125g servings.

Finland Juusto PorttiKolesterolia Alentava Tyrnijogurtti A sea buckthorn berry flavoured yoghurt. It is claimed to be a cholesterol reducing yoghurt containing Reducol plant stanols and plant sterols.The yoghurt is low in lactose and contains asidofilus and bifidus

cultures.France Cora Yoghurt Drink An artificially sweetened and lightly sugared yoghurt drink with L. casei.This product contains no fat

and is available in a 10 x 100g pack.France Yoplait Aloé Véra Flavoured yoghurts with active bifidus. Each pack contains 4 x 110g pack.Austria Alpro Pfirsich & Aprikose A peach & apricot flavoured soya drink, which is free from cholesterol and lactose, 100% vegetarian,

and enriched with vitamin B2 and calcium, also contains Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, natural isoflavones, and contains no artificial colourants, aroma or genetically modified ingredients.

Belgium Danone Activia aux Extraits New in the Activia range of probiotic yoghurts is Activia with soya extracts. It contains milk and it is de Soja packaged in a 4 x 125g pack.

Portugal Gelgurte Yoghurt with Plum, Dry Fermented yoghurt specially formulated for women, with plum, dry fruits, cereals and fibre. It contains Fruits, Cereals and Fibre bifidus lactis which is claimed to help to naturally balance the intestinal ‘flora’.The yoghurt is said to

provide a slow release of energy, and helps to build resistance.Available in a multipack of two 150g plastic pots.

South Korea Pasteur Dairy Kwaebyeon Yoghurt A refreshing and mild tasting yoghurt drink containing synbiotics which cleanses and regulates the intestines. It also contains Howaru Bifido probiotic cultures, which is claimed to stimulate the functioning of the immune system, inhibiting the growth of harmful bacteria.

Germany Unilever Pro-Activ Low Calorie Becel extends its Pro-Activ range of low calorie and low fat yoghurt drinks with a strawberry flavour,Yoghurt Drink claimed to help lower cholesterol levels if consumed daily.Already available is Original (plain).They

come in a pack containing four plastic bottles with foil lids.South Korea Namyang Dairy Products Organic One Yoghurt A fruit flavoured yoghurt with chlorella extract made from organic whole milk. It is packaged in 5 x

Drinks 80ml plastic bottles.South Korea Maeil Dairy Bulgaria Yoghurts An apple flavoured yoghurt drink with 100mg Lactoferrin derived from milk, which are claimed to

maintain balance in the bowels and intestines. Four 150ml bottles are packaged in a plastic wrapper.South Korea DM Foods Apple Drinking Yoghurt Apple Drinking Yoghurt is an apple flavoured, healthy yoghurt which is claimed to contain bifudus

bacteria, which is said to be good for the body.Philippines Nestlé Chocolate Preschool Hi- Chocolate flavoured preschool hi-calcium milk powder with Prebio_, EFA, iodine and calcium is suitable

Calcium Milk Powder for children from the age of three years old. Prebio_ helps maintain the digestive system. Essential fattyacid (EFA) with equal proportions of linoleic acid and alpha linolenic acid is important for the brain.Calcium helps promote the growth of bones and teeth, while iodine is also important for the brain.This product is available in a 400g box.

Poland Danone Waniliowy Vanilla Flavour A pack of 4 x 100g bottles of vanilla flavour drinking yoghurt with L.Casei Defensis.This product is Yoghurt Drink claimed to enhance the immune system.

Philippines Nestlé Probiotic Drink A Pro-heart probiotic drink with ActiCol contains plant sterols to help lower cholesterol.This productwith ActiCol is available in a 400ml pack of five 80ml bottles.

Germany Nöm Probiotischer Joghurt A probitoic yoghurt drink with vitamins C, E and B6, L-carnitin and probiotic cultures LA5, BB12 and L.drink mit Vitaminen casei 431.This product contains 0.1% fat and is sweetened with dextrose and artificial sweeteners. Each

pack contains 4 x 125g servings.Germany De-Vau-Ge Soja-Drink Naturell Soja-Drink Naturell contains no added sugar, is 100% vegetarian, contains no cholesterol, no lactose

Gesundkostwerk and no gluten, and is enriched with calcium. It is guaranteed free of genetically engineered ingredients and contains Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids.This product can be used just like milk, for drinking,cooking, cereals and baking.

Netherlands Campina Drinking Yoghurt with A low fat drinking yoghurt (6% fat) with LGG, extra vitamins and added orange juice. Each pack LGG & Vitamins contains 6 x 100g servings.

UK Marks & Spencer Fresh Omega-3 Milk An omega-3 enriched fresh milk available in skimmed and semi-skimmed versions.The milk comes in a 750ml cartons priced at 69p.

Austria Nöm Balance Yoghurt Drinks Nöm has launched Balance yoghurt drinks, which contain 0.8% fat and are claimed to activate digestion.The product is available in 100g PET bottles and comprises the flavours: Erdbeer (strawberry); and Cerealien (cereals).(pear, maracuja & orange).

South Africa Woolworths Howaru Plus Daily A sweetened cranberry flavoured drink which is enriched with bifido bacteria, said to strengthen the Defence Drink immune system and inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria and lactose digestion. It contains no artificial

colours or flavours. Each pack contains 4 bottles.UK St Ivel St Ivel Advance A range of milk enriched with Omega-3, aimed at families with young children. Omega-3 is said to play

a part in brain fuction, enhancing learning and concentration.This range includes Fresh Whole Milk and Fresh Semi-Skimmed Milk. Singapore Horizon Organic Dairy Blueberries & Cream Organic low fat bluberries and cream yoghurt containing 1% milk fat.The yoghurt has been newly improved with NutraFlora, which is said to increase calcium absorption.

Czech Republic Nöm Probiotic Drink A pack of 4 x 100g fruit probiotic drinks with lactobacillus LA5 and bifidobacterium BB12 cultures. It isclaimed that regular consumption is good for the flora and digestive system.

Czech Republic Lidl Probiotic Drink A pack of 4 x 125g probiotic drinks with an orange flavour. It contains functional organisms and 2% fat.UK Danone Fig Flavoured Probiotic A fig flavoured probiotic yoghurt, available in a 4 x 125g pack. It contains bifidus digestivums and is

Yoghurt claimed to target 50% of British women who suffer from bloating or digestive discomfort.Australia National Foods Chocolate Milk Chocolate flavoured milk which is said to be free from added sugar and 99% free from fat. It is claimed

to have a low glycemic index and to contain 120% of daily calcium needs.This product is available in a 600ml carton. It displays the symbol of approval from the National Heart Foundation.Also available in this range is Coffee Flavoured Milk.

Austria Berglandmilch Whey Drinks A range of isotonic fruit whey drinks, which contain up to 75% of the recommended daily dosage in minerals.They contain 11 vitamins and minerals, vegetable oil and dietary fibre inulin.They are suitable for diabetics.

Singapore Yoplait Blueberry Patch Yoghurt A low fat blueberry patch flavoured yoghurt with aspartame and other sweeteners. It contains added vitamins A and D, and live cultures. It contains 1/3 fewer calories than regular low fat yoghurts.This product is claimed to be clinically proven to help burn more fat than just cutting calories alone and is high in calcium.

Austria Alpro Soya Yoghurt Desserts New under the Alpro Soja brand are soya yoghurts, packaged in 4 x 125g packs with 0% cholesterol and 0% lactose, enriched with calcium, Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids.

Austria Mona Naturprodukte Sojactiv Prebiotic Drink A prebiotic soya drink with strawberries, calcium and artificial sweeteners. It is free of cholesterol and lactose and 100% free of genetically engineered ingredients. It comes in a 500ml pack of four 125ml plastic bottles.

Italy Parmalat Skimmed Milk A skimmed milk enriched with vitamin E and coenzyme Q10 in a 1-litre pack.Italy Parmalat Pineapple Dessert A multipack of three 110g pineapple desserts, with coenzyme Q10. It is also low fat.Italy Parmalat Yoghurt Range A range of low-fat yoghurts with vitamins and coenzyme Q10 in packs of two 125g pots.

I M P O R TA N T N O T I C EJULY 2005 35


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access by others as detailed above, that it will account to New Nutrition Business in full for the sales proceeds at the then current

prevailing single copy price as set by New Nutrition Business from time to time, for each and every occurrence, and further that the

Purchaser fully and effectually indemnifies New Nutrition Business in respect of any claim howsoever arising by any such subsequent

unlicensed user against New Nutrition Business. Similarly, if any other piece of identified New Nutrition Business material, amounting to

an article or more, becomes available to the Purchaser by virtue of a breach of this term by any third party, which is then read or

used by the Purchaser in any way, that the Purchaser is hereby agreeing to purchase a copy of the item from New Nutrition Business

containing that piece of intellectual property from New Nutrition Business at the then current prevailing single copy price as set by New

Nutrition Business from time to time for each and every occurrence (unless at New Nutrition Business’s sole discretion the money is sought

and subsequently remitted by the original subscriber), and to abide by New Nutrition Business’s license terms.

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New Nutrition Business and are protected inter-alia by International Copyright Law and the Copyright Law of the United States of

America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code and other intellectual property rights and also by the

terms of this agreement, and that no rights in any of the materials are transferred to the Purchaser. The Purchaser agrees the

Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code is only relevant

where New Nutrition Business has not sought and secured protection elsewhere in these conditions, or indeed where sections are

expressly excluded, without prejudicing the enforceability of the remainder of the Title. The Purchaser agrees that the provisions of

Section 107 of Title 17 of the United States Code and sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 shall not

apply to the use to be made by the Purchaser. The Purchaser undertakes that it will not copy, reproduce, print or store in any

manner (electronic or otherwise), extract or transmit in any form or otherwise deal with in any way the whole or part of the data,

materials or information contained in New Nutrition Business without first obtaining the consent in writing of the Publisher of New

NutritionBusiness.

4. New Nutrition Business contains information obtained from authentic sources using primary research wherever possible. Reasonable

efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the authors and the publishers cannot accept responsibility for

the validity of all materials. Neither the authors nor the publishers, nor anyone else associated with this publication, shall be liable

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5. New Nutrition Business nor any part of it may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

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for resale. Specific permission must be obtained in writing from the publishers.

S U B S C R I B E36 JULY 2005


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n ew n utrition business · n ew n utrition volume 10 number 9 july 2005 issn 1464-3308 page 9...

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