A guide on functional ingredients for beverages and supplements
Functional ingredients are a category of compounds that add beneficial physiological properties to drinks, supplements, and even foods. The most common ones are vitamins and minerals, but these days the list has absolutely ballooned from a dozen or so to literally hundreds and thousands.
This can make it hard for inexperienced beverage or supplements startups to know where to start, especially since there’s some complexity inherent in mixing many different such ingredients together into a cohesive recipe that is practical, economical (without being cheap), and stable during the entirety of a product’s shelf life.
But it’s not rocket science, and I am hoping to give you a few introductory and intermediate pointers, as well as communicate my experience so that you can hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls.
Where does one begin?
When I first started having to source functional ingredients for drinks many years ago, I’ll admit: it was a bit intimidating.
That’s because even getting the name of the specific ingredient you’re trying to source is not so simple. Yes, it sounds absurd, but do understand that a very large percentage of functional ingredients do not, in reality, exist in a pure form as some would think.
Magnesium was one of my firsts lessons in this: in our heads, Magnesium is… well, Magnesium. But it’s actually more complicated than that and Magnesium comes in the form of a compound—as in, it’s Magnesium Citrate or Lactate or Chloride that you can actually source, not just pure, elemental Magnesium.
This simply means that the functional part you’re after (e.g. Magnesium) is attached to one or more elements. Like Magnesium Citrate. That’s a compound, and it has different physicochemical properties to a Lactate or Gluconate or Hydroxide or Oxide or Sulfate or Phosphate or Acetate. I am doing this on purpose—it’s crucial to understand why Magnesium Chloride may be the more appropriate compound for fortifying your product than, say, Magnesium Sulfate.
That is why Magnesium Hydroxide is great for use as an antacid (to neutralize stomach acid), while Magnesium Sulfate (Epsom salt) is often used in bath products for its purported muscle-relaxing properties. It’s why, despite its more salty taste, we use the much more stable Magnesium Chloride compound in our high-pH Water+ products, even though Magnesium Lactate is more bioavailable and better-tasting. It’s just unstable in high pH aqueous solutions and separates.
Your options in the start, therefore, are limited unless you read up on a mountain of science, and even then it might not be enough—not everyone is a chemist, and so identifying the most appropriate compounds to use is no simple task. That’s why even we work with chemists with formulation expertise when more complex recipes are required. We offer this know-how to our private label clients free of charge.
The Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) trap
Let’s say you figure out exactly what you require for your drink or supplement—whether after you get a good grasp of the science, contract a consulting company, or just work with us. The next step is to not just hunt down a supplier. That’s not too hard these days if you have an internet connection. What’s a bit more challenging is filtering traders from the actual manufacturers, which can sometimes help lower costs, but sometimes opens you up to the MOQ trap.
That’s what I call it, at least.
The MOQ trap is the concept of manufacturers and sellers trying to saddle you with quantities of functional ingredients that you can’t reasonably go through before the best by date of the stuff expires. Depending on the ingredient, you may be able to stomach the loss, but things can very quickly get out of hand if your product is a cocktail of a dozen or more beneficial compounds.
Here’s an actual example from around 2018, if memory serves. We were looking for a bit more exotic powdered flavors for a project we were working on. Since powdered flavors are less available than their liquid versions, and because we were looking for things such as Lychee and Guava rather than Orange and Lemon, a certain mega-corp required an MOQ of 250kg of each. Multiply that by 6, since the client wanted a flavor combo (so 2 unique flavors per product for 3 products), and things quickly approached ludicrous land.
Not only are 250kg of a flavor a significant cash investment, you also have to keep in mind the dosage—at 250mg of flavor per product (and it can be a lot less), that comes out to a million drinks. For an entirely new product line, with no distribution groundwork and infrastructure. Frankly, in smaller markets, even the likes of Pepsi would struggle to move so much product.
Worse yet, there’s a time window in which you have to utilize this mountain of ingredients because of the expiration date. Ingredients manufacturers get really cute with this because not only are some expiration dates designed to invalidate your inventory faster than strictly necessary, but also because you’re often sent ingredients that were manufactured a while ago, further restricting your horizon.
Finally, if you’re not keeping a close watch on MOQs, even if you have the cash to spare to acquire the goods at the requested quantity levels, you also need to keep in mind that storage can become an issue. Whether you’ll be storing these mountains of ingredients on your own, or have a private label manufacturer like us do it for you, warehouse space is not exactly free.
To avoid the MOQ trap, a combination of factors are usually required in my experience: large supplier base, so you can negotiate more confidently, history of successfully working with such companies, which often opens doors closed to others, and a lot of somber consideration. Yes, if you’re like me, you absolutely abhor messing up with your otherwise perfect product concept, but sometimes compromises have to be made. In my case, I said no the Lychee and Guava, and embraced traditional flavors.
At the end of the day, it’s almost always the case that a product fails in the market for reasons vastly different to “Orange is a boring flavor, and Lychee is cool. If only we had used Lychee…”
Certificates, regulations, sourcing destination
One can’t just put whatever they like inside a food product, such as a beverage or supplement, intended for mass consumption. There are rules and regulations, designed to protect the public. It is absolutely essential that you understand the regulatory context within which you operate and what is or isn’t on the list of approved ingredients.
This can sometimes be grunt work, specifically because you’re forced to interface with gigantic, slow-moving bureaucratic machines, but with enough experience, the process of validation can be shortened significantly.
But let’s say that the functional ingredient you’re after is allowable for use in your product and you’ve found a supplier for it. What’s next?
First and foremost, you need to make sure that the documentation accompanying the goods is in order. Depending on your market, this can include different types of documents, such as a Certificate of Analysis (CoA), Certificate of Origin (CoO), Safety Data Sheet (SDS), Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), and others. If you’re looking to make specific claims on the label, such as Kosher/Halal, Organic, or Non-GMO status, you’ll require even more certificates.
These days, with international trade this ingrained, finding a supplier that meets these requirements is not necessarily the hardest thing in the world. Even manufacturers in China, who offer just about every ingredient you can think of, are well-incentivized to comply with US and EU regulations in order to make sales.
This brings me to a final point I’d like to make: from a physiochemical point of view, ingredients are what ingredients are.
This is to say that Protein (quite popular now), whether sourced from the largest, most successful protein manufacturers on the planet, or a more modest and smaller company, is likely identically beneficial to the human body.
Now, there do exist different methods of isolating functional ingredients, or introducing them as specific compounds, that can make enhance their bioavailability or other desired property, but it is up to you to decide whether the extra cost is worth the bragging rights in your marketing. There’s no fundamentally correct answer to that question. It can just as easily be a “Yes” as it can be a “No”.
AMATA has significant experience with regulatory compliance in the EU, as well as some experience with the US market, where we have an FDA-approved status and have already shipped goods successfully.
Nutrition and Health claims on labels
Depending on where you are, it is very possible that a regulatory framework that allows for nutritional and health claims exists.
An example in the EU would be labeling your product as “low fat”, “high fiber”, or “low calorie” on the label and in marketing communication. These are incredibly potent, as they capture the attention of consumers. Perhaps even more importantly, these rules were set to help consumers make better health choices.
Make claims that are not authorized by the overseeing regulatory body, however, and you’ve got yourself a serious problem.
Examples of claims that can help elevate your private label brand
Let’s say your product contains Vitamin A in one of the forms it is allowed. You can elevate your labeling by making some authorized claims, such as:
Vitamin A contributes to normal iron metabolism
Vitamin A contributes to the maintenance of normal mucous membranes
Vitamin A contributes to the maintenance of normal skin
Vitamin A contributes to the maintenance of normal vision
Vitamin A contributes to the normal function of the immune system
Vitamin A has a role in the process of cell specialization
In fact, by making good use of allowable health claims, you can tailor your specific formulations to target certain pain points consumers have. An example of this would be a Beauty-category supplement or beverage, which can be either an aggregation of multiple pain-points (nails, hair, skin), or specifically targeted at one of the sub-categories. A concrete formulation for skin may include a few or all of the following:
Biotin: contributes to the maintenance of normal skin
Copper: contributes to normal skin pigmentation
Iodine: contributes to the maintenance of normal skin
Niacin (that’s Vitamin B3): contributes to the maintenance of normal skin
Riboflavin (Vitamin B2): contributes to the maintenance of normal skin
Vitamin A: contributes to the maintenance of normal skin
Vitamin C: contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin
Zinc: contributes to the maintenance of normal skin
A formula like this would have all the bells and whistles of permitted health claims relating to skin, allowing you to elevate your product in the eyes of consumers. The best part? These are carefully evaluated by the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), and they do not abide pseudo-science. So you can be confident that in such a product, the above formulation has significant, scientifically-proven effect on the human body. That’s crucial: it’s not just about making a sale. You want your customers to keep coming back, and that’s easier done when your product actually has the desired effect.
If you go down this road, which I strongly suggest, we’re ready to consult you on what’s permitted and what isn’t. No extra payment required—it’s part of our full-service offer for private label clients.
Look at you, you’ve gotten this far! Congrats on your attention-span, that’s impressive! Hopefully this introduction into ingredients sourcing, the necessary documentation required, and the marketing benefits of health claims has been of at least some use.
Now that you’ve got the fundamentals covered, perhaps it’s time to shoot us a message? Whether it’s Text, Viber, WhatsApp, E-mail or a call, that’s fine—feel free to pick the least personally existential dread-y way to get in touch and we’ll oblige.