Health through food, meaningful dosage, and nutrigenomics
Throughout her discussions around dietary supplements, Foss takes as her touchstone the functional medicine model. As she puts it: “We work from a personalised or ‘bespoke’ perspective. Although clients may have similar symptoms, the triggers for them may be different.”
This is just one of many current approaches to women’s nutrition, health and wellbeing which is emphasising the personal dimension.
Another is the science of nutrigenomics, which looks at the relationship between diet, health and genetics—which is, after all, the dimension which is most specific to any individual (see box-out).
Feasibly, this domain of personalised nutrition will continue to function as its own micro-climate, not affecting the broader market. Alternatively, it can be viewed as a longer-term threat—or a potential opportunity, if supplement formulators can find ways of working within this more personalised universe.
In the medium-term, brands are likely to find other ways of building a stronger rapport with women, and with consumers in general. Vegan-friendly formulation, as Zita West has demonstrated, is one such strategy. At Källa, Marinho de Lemos details others. “When we look at the gut-health market, there are very few brands marrying scientifically-based bacteria with a natural—and vegan—positioning.”
If the brand’s designers have applied themselves to creating attractive packaging, this is not out of some fuzzy attempt to appeal to women. “A lot of people stop taking supplements because they forget,” she says, adding that this is often because the pack is kept out of sight. “Our packaging is designed to be kept in-view.”
Community-building, it could be argued, particularly with all the tools of social media now available, can also go a long way towards compensating for a lack of personalisation in the product itself. “Many customers just want the basics, such as information about when they should mix their probiotic and where they should store it,” says Marinho de Lemos. “Others will want more of a deep-dive into gut-health with input from experts.”
A further challenge to the traditional supplements market could increasingly come from consumers choosing to create their own foods and drinks at home with tailored nutrition. This could include fermented products such as kombucha, kefir and yogurt, says de Santa Izabel. “There is a growing understanding that each person has a unique gut with its own specific needs,” she says. “They want to understand what is the best option for them.”
Were her business to take off in a big way, it could see households buying not only less packaged yogurt but also fewer probiotic and synbiotic supplements. One benefit of this approach is that it would bypass the challenge of packing meaningful amounts of prebiotic into synbiotic capsules. But many will continue to be swayed by the convenience factor—they may want their supplementary nutrition to be even less bulky than it already is.
Achieving a meaningful dose of any ingredient within a small capsule or tablet can be a challenge. But by the same token, consumers may be reluctant to take three or four doses a day. The Zita West range typically advises a dosage of three capsules daily. “This is quite a lot for some people to take,” West admits. “We’ve managed to reduce it down with Vitafem to two capsules a day, and are currently trying to do the same with the Vital Essence [post-pregnancy] range.”
According to the company, certain antioxidants were substituted for others, and the greater bio-availability of some ingredients meant that a smaller volume was required.
There are few fields that can be traced back to a defined start-point, rather than emerging in a gradual evolution, but nutrigenomics is one of them. The publication of a draft sequence and analysis of the human genome almost exactly 20 years ago was followed by a final version two years later, providing researchers with the tools to integrate this into personalised nutritional insights.
Valentini Konstantinidou is a nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics coach and founder of DNANutriCoach. She was born in Greece but runs her business from Spain.
Konstantinidou completed her PhD research on genetic changes as a result of the Mediterranean diet, and particularly extra-virgin olive oil consumption in humans. “We began by investigating the changes in human gene expression after one month, a year, and so on,” she says. “Levels of the HDL and LDL fatty acids can be measured in the blood circulation, but what are the genes that drive any resulting change?”
The next step is to confirm if the up-regulation of those genes has a positive impact. Damaging or disease-related genes can also be down-regulated, she says.
This in turn led her and her colleagues into the field of nutrigenetics, which hinges on the differences between individuals on the basis of their DNA sequence. “It looks at the ways in which our bodies each process and digest the various nutrients differently, and at our personal sensitivity to dietary metabolisms,” Konstantinidou explains.
“What this brings is the ability to create tailor-made, personalised nutrition,” she says. “Whether during puberty, pregnancy or menopause, women have different nutritional needs. If we can target that nutrition as precisely as possible, we may be able to achieve long-term health and wellness.”
What a response to a particular DNA fingerprint might look like in terms of supplementation is a relatively new science requiring plenty of research—and plenty of care, says Konstantinidou. There is no shortage of university spinoffs and start-ups assessing, not only their offering, in terms of pinpoint nutrition, but also the price tag appropriate for such a tailored service.
In many cases, DNA analysis can highlight a simple solution, she says: “It may be to do with turning on or off a single element in a woman’s diet, and this can be transformative.”