We’ve all been there. You’re at a trade show and take a bite of an energy bar that tastes like dirt. Or you’re sent free samples of a new nutraceutical beverage with the flavor of chalk. Nutraceuticals are fighting an uphill battle in terms of taste, as nutraceutical ingredients are particularly challenging in their flavor profiles. But hopefully chalky and gritty and just plain bad are becoming adjectives of the past when describing these products. By seeking the advice of consumers on taste and actually listening to their concerns, flavor companies have made great strides in this market in a very short time. Today while not all of the kinks have been worked out, the future looks promising.

Flavor Trends
From the soaring demand for soy in virtually every conceivable food form to the desire to stay as close to nature as possible, flavors are riding a roller coaster of trends in the nutraceuticals market. Teri Mascuch, director of marketing, McCormick Flavor Division, Hunt Valley, MD, weighed in on the soy trend. “Soy is huge and growing in all food categories. Most active is the beverage category, but now you are seeing side dishes, dairy cheese replacements, cereals, cereal bars and confection bars.”

Soy has also surged because there is more acceptance for soy-fortified products, according to Chuck Meid, technical sales, Flavor Savor, Bensenville, IL. In the past, he said, these types of products were geared toward physical fitness-which initially got this market started-but now the market as a whole has boomed.

Olivier de Botton, CEO, OSF Flavors, Windsor, CT, discussed the natural flavor trend. “Together with GMO-free, people are looking more for natural flavors because of the belief that a product is better for you when you have natural flavors instead of artificial ones on your label.”

Albert Woszczak, senior vice president, technical service, Bell Flavors and Fragrances, Northbrook, IL, agreed. “Companies are looking for natural flavors and the new flavor architecture is very well-designed to deliver compounds without fillers or chemicals because it muddles the ‘well-being’ label,” he said, adding, “The well-being label is important to us so this is a trend we are trying to maintain in the flavor market.”

June Montanari, beverage category marketing, International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), Dayton, NJ, said requests for ‘elegant’ flavors are also on the rise. “Indulgent flavors are being used now in nutritional beverages. While the traditional indulgent flavors were typically vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, now coffee and caramel are just as big.”

Bill Pullia, business development manager, Flavors of North America, Carol Stream, IL, agreed. “We are trying to get away from the standard flavor profile and make the products seem more like rewards. For example, instead of chocolate you have chocolate mousse or a Black Forest cake flavor. Companies are embellishing and growing the definition and the expectation of what the standard line products are,” he said.

In other trends, herbal use in food products seems to be down, according to Maureen Draganchuk, vice president, business development, Virginia Dare, Brooklyn, NY, especially with larger customers. “As far as selection of fortifiers, most people are going to minerals and vitamins or healthy proteins,” she said.

A close partner to flavor is the overall aroma of the product, which is becoming more important as products are formulated with more unusual tasting nutritional ingredients. John Ashby, vice president-technical, Mane, Oakland, CA, commented, “It is important that when a person opens a product, the first experience is a pleasant aroma. If they smell something medicinal or strange, that off note tends to get anchored in the brain and they focus on that while they are eating. But if they notice a pleasant vanilla or strawberry aroma they will focus on that first and notice the underlying off flavors less.”

Beverages And Bars And Soy-Oh My!
Requests are pouring in at flavor houses for bars and beverages and a large number of them contain soy. All of these categories have experienced exponential growth over the last couple of years without showing signs of slowing down. Discussing beverages, bars and soy was Virginia Dare’s Ms. Draganchuk. “Beverages and bars are still hot and soy will move in all those directions. Knudsen recently came out with a soy juice product and I believe this is going to be a huge market and will fit in with trends taking off in Australia and other foreign countries,” she said. “The dessert category is also an area where I am seeing a lot of growth with things like frozen desserts and puddings using soy and other fortifiers.”

Mr. Pullia of Flavors of North America concurred. “Bars are huge. Two or three years ago you would walk into a convenience store and you wouldn’t even see bars. Now you have these same convenience stores exhibiting endless displays of bars,” He went on, “Beverages also are picking up steam. I am seeing fortified coffees and teas come into the market right now and hot and cold beverages with herbal extracts, vitamins and minerals. Soy-based beverages and hot beverages are seeing the most growth, with hot beverages providing another eating occasion for the introduction of nutraceuticals.”

Steven Pearce, managing director, Britannia Natural Products Limited, Suffolk, U.K., said beverages and bars are neck and neck in terms of growth. “Right now people are approaching us to flavor both,” he said. “But whether or not one category is stronger than another is a hard question to answer because traditionally 40% of the flavor business has been in beverages. However, the use of our products in the bar area has definitely increased.”

Carole Pollock, principle flavorist and director of flavor materials, Wild Flavors, Erlanger, KY, said beverages present less formulation issues than bars. “With beverages it is not as hard to cover up the flavors as it is with bars, which stay in your mouth a longer time. Beverages pass through your mouth quite quickly and if you have a good balance of sweetness and acidity to make the beverages more refreshing that also helps.”

Mane’s Mr. Ashby said formulations for bars are constantly changing. “There is a huge amount of activity in bars. One of the reasons is that the formulations for bars are changing almost on a daily basis,” he said. “For example, a lot of products were formulated with sucralose and now the sucralose supply is dwindling. Companies have to go back and reformulate products and that completely changes the flavor profile.”

Bars will soon become more taste-driven than functional, according to Donald Wilkes, president of Blue Pacific, City of Industry, CA. “As far as bars, I think you are going to continue to see a trend toward dessert type products where the taste is trying to achieve a richness or satisfaction for the consumer as opposed to just functional benefits,” he offered. “That is going to require flavor technology and innovations in terms of utilizing ingredients that are fat encapsulated so that the off flavor characteristics are not noticeable when you bite into the bar.”

Beyond beverages and bars, Bell Flavors’ Mr. Woszczak pointed to other interesting products being fortified. “Nutraceuticals are finding their way into salsa, dip, meat, cheese, bread, pasta, candy and salad dressing. We are seeing more requests for flavoring and masking these finished products that contain nutraceutical ingredients.” Even mayonnaise, he said, is being spiked with nutraceuticals.

Hot Flavors
Some are talking tropical while others are sticking to the traditional and then there are those who like to be indulgent. However, not every flavor works well with every application. According to Laura Ferrante, director of marketing, Comax Flavors, Melville, NY, “We find that different applications need different flavors. Bars continue to use different types and blends of chocolate, nuts, caramel and citrus flavors as well as the indulgent flavors like cheesecake, fudge and cappuccino,” she said. “Soy-based beverages are moving past the vanillas and the chocolates and on to fruits and chai and other sweet brown profiles, while energy beverages are moving past basic citrus toward the exotic and tropical flavors.”

Wild Flavors’ Ms. Pollock said some flavors are popular because they appear healthier to the consumer. “Grapefruit and cranberry are more popular because of the healthy aspects associated with these fruits. These are things that are in the diet that might not have been in the forefront of juices but now have become popular in the nutraceuticals market,” she said, adding, “Also, anything that has tea in it is comforting to people because tea has built in refreshment and health benefits.”

Berry, berry blends and some of the tropicals are coming on, said Mr. Meid of Flavor Savor, because they have a lot of depth to their character and help in their own way of masking products.

One problem with flavors is getting customers to understand formulation challenges. Ms. Draganchuk of Virginia Dare said some companies still insist on having vanilla ice cream and vanilla and chocolate puddings or orange, punch or grape flavors, but some of those profiles sometimes do not fit well. “We have found things like maple nut, caramel, mocha, banana and orange and cream work. Anything with cream blends in the soy market is pretty hot right now and works wonderfully,” she said. “Punch also seems to be something that everyone is looking for because it is very forgiving and works well in almost anything. Tropicals continue and have become mainstream and chai continues to expand its acceptance across the board.”

OSF’s Mr. de Botton said that flavors rely heavily on tradition. “You still have your vanilla shake and your chocolate shake because that is what people have been raised on and they don’t really want to change,” he commented. “It is not a matter of bringing forth new flavor concepts; it is a matter of making existing ones better.”

Flavor Challenges
There has been a lot of progress in the nutraceuticals industry in terms of improving taste but challenges still remain. Companies are still grappling with finding a happy medium between flavoring and masking, while others are concentrating on underlying factors such as mouthfeel and aroma.

Mike Bloom, vice president and technical director, Flavor and Fragrance Specialties, Mahwah, NJ, said the challenges of flavoring nutraceuticals are the same challenges flavor companies encountered with pharmaceuticals. “Nutraceuticals are usually bitter and to be efficacious they have to be at a distasteful level. So the challenge is making unpalatable active ingredients palatable,” he explained. “There are two schools of thought with nutraceuticals. Some people want them masked completely so that they taste as good as a candy bar, while others want to keep some of the medicinal active ingredient taste so that consumers feel like the nutraceuticals are working.”

Tom DeBiase, director of technical business development-Sweet Products, International Flavors & Fragrances, Dayton, NJ, also talked about challenges. “First there is the actual flavor challenge in some of the higher fortified products where the off notes of some of the vitamins, minerals or other nutraceutical ingredients really pose a flavor problem,” he said. “The second challenge is in the area of mouthfeel and that relates to the excessive grittiness or chalkiness associated with ingredients such as calcium.”

Discussing the small successes and pitfalls of masking was Mr. Pullia of Flavors of North America. “There have been great strides made in masking off flavors, bitterness in particular. Masking vitamins and minerals is something that we have been at for a very long time and the industry as a whole is a lot better,” he commented. “Some of the newer challenges have been the herbal products. Instead of trying to mask those flavors because they are so pronounced, what we try to do is work with that flavor and bring it where it is going. For instance, if you have an extract like St. John’s Wort that has an earthy note, instead of making it cherry flavored you bring it to a coffee or chocolate flavor and work in the areas that the flavor is trying to take you rather than trying to make it something it’s not. The first reaction is always to mask it instead of working with the ingredient that you have.”

OSF’s Mr. de Botton said masking is challenging but essential. “The number one challenge is to mask the off taste, especially with soy and whey protein as well as vitamins and minerals. These all have specific off tastes,” he said. “A lot of people claim to solve the problems by increasing the sweetness or by overflavoring. When they do that they simply improve the beginning of the taste but the product ends up leaving an aftertaste. Also, vanilla is not the only way to work with nutraceuticals.” Additionally, Mr. de Botton said that a flavor needs to work with the processing of the product. “For example, when manufacturers process energy bars or soymilk they need really strong and concentrated flavors that will survive the processing of those products.”

Mr. Wilkes of Blue Pacific concurred. “We don’t think the concept of just adding flavors is the answer. You have to understand the functionality of the ingredients and how ingredients react with one another because flavoring is just one portion of how to make a good tasting finished product,” he explained. “A lot of companies rely wholly on the flavor system to hide all of their sins but the truth is that it is not only the flavor system but it could be a variety of issues, for example, the quality of the water used in the product. Sometimes there has to be adjustments in the processing systems.”

McCormick’s Ms. Mascuch said providing the effective amounts of functional ingredients can cause difficulty. “Cramming in more healthful ingredients can pose a problem with flavoring, especially as they are trying to reach proposed efficacious levels or functional levels. If people are just putting a smattering of these ingredients in a finished product there is very little flavor problem.”

Flavors Promote Consumer Acceptability
How important are flavors really? To health food consumers, flavor has not been a significant issue because they are willing to forgo taste for the health benefit. However, as these nutraceutical products move into the mainstream, the industry is dealing with a whole new consumer; on their list of priorities, taste is on top.

Wild Flavors’ Ms. Pollock said flavors have to make the product as acceptable-tasting as a non-nutraceutical product because consumers expect it. “They will not come back and consume it again if they are going to pay $1.79 for it and it tastes like ground up grass. The are willing to accept some difference, which is why you can use odder flavors, but they still have to enjoy it. If flavors were not invented to suit the off flavors of these nutraceuticals you would not have a nutraceutical market,” she said.

“Flavors make nutraceuticals more palatable-that is the simple answer,” said Mr. Bloom of Flavor & Fragrance Specialties, “They give nutraceuticals aroma and taste so that the consumer will keep these things in their system without spitting them out. This is especially important in beverages because these are products people consume in large quantities.”

Debbie Johns, director, strategic marketing, Firmenich, Princeton, NJ, said flavors really have two functions. “Most important is that they provide good taste. But masking the off notes of nutraceuticals is really a key role as consumer acceptability revolves around taste for repeat purchase. While it is important to have the ingredients in there, if it doesn’t taste good the consumer won’t come back a second time.”

IFF’s Mr. DeBiase used the example of previous products that failed because they did not measure up in taste. “We try to keep in mind the example of the no- and low-fat industry when it first surfaced. Everyone was ready and willing to try these products but repeat sales were not where they should have been and a lot of products were removed from the market,” he said. “We made the determination very early that the flavor is really going to drive this category.”

Mr. de Botton said having products that taste good will increase market share. “If you really want to get market share you have to have a good flavor system, something that works specifically for your product and that tastes good,” he explained. “When things become trendy you have a lot of newcomers flooding the category but they don’t realize that this is an investment that takes time and technology. All the companies that do this work anticipate the trends and put together these products with the right flavor technology-these companies will be the winners in the end.”