Functional foods that aim to maintain or improve health are appearing in a host of different food categories. This article takes an in-depth look at one of the earliest ways of fortifying food – namely with calcium. A key tool in the fight against osteoporosis, calcium-enriched foods have forged a blueprint for other functional foods to follow. just-food.com reports.

An awareness of the physiological benefits of discrete dietary components is underpinning the current emphasis on food and beverage product fortification. This trend has almost reached pandemic proportions throughout North America, Western Europe and the more developed Asia Pacific Rim markets. The addition of antioxidants, dietary fibre, probiotics, minerals, vitamins and so on to a range of food formulations is a fashionable marketing ploy. The situation has contributed to the emergence and strengthening growth of a popular new consumer marketing category, variously identified as functional foods and nutraceuticals.

But what is driving this development? A mounting file of scientific evidence, a newly fashioned and receptive regulatory environment, changing public beliefs and new patterns of consumer behaviour are supporting the increased awareness and linkage of food consumption with well being and good health. All this is leading to the development and marketing of novel food offerings fortified with one or more microelements in order to deliver a competitive advantage and improved target market appeal.

“functional foods are breaching the traditional divide between the food and pharmaceutical sectors”

Essential to all of this, food and beverages are becoming positioned as much more than products for mere physical nourishment. In contemporary terms functional foods are breaching the traditional divide between the food and pharmaceutical sectors. These products are squarely facing up as credible health care alternatives that do more than simply fuelling, energizing or entertaining the consumer.

One of the most prominent elements in this fortification trend continues to be calcium, an essential mineral required by the human body. Over 99% of the calcium in our bodies is stored in the skeletal framework and teeth. The remainder is located in our soft tissues and bloodstream where it is essential for a number of physiological functions, including muscle contraction and relaxation, the blood clotting process, ensuring that the nervous system can transmit messages through the body, controlling hypertension and immune defences.

The body utilises calcium from two sources:

Dietary calcium, which maintains the calcium reservoir in our bones; and

The calcium from our bones, which acts as a supply source to make up for shortfalls in dietary calcium.

It is the continued mining of skeletal calcium that causes bones to become weak and brittle, and thus is the leading cause of osteoporosis. United States public health authorities have estimated that up to 25 million women and 5 million men in the US are to some extent affected by osteoporosis, including anything up to 40% of women at the post-menopausal stage of life.

“Consumption of dietary calcium is therefore one way of counteracting osteoporosis”

Consumption of dietary calcium is therefore one way of counteracting osteoporosis, as well as contributing to other aspects of normal systemic functioning.

While calcium is readily available in a number of foods (dairy and milk products, the bones of small fish, bean curd, legumes and vegetables such as broccoli and chard), it is due to lifestyle issues and cultural/dietary factors that osteoporosis and calcium deficiency are so inextricably intertwined. More particularly:

• Vegetarians who choose not to consume dairy products (particularly milk, yoghurt, cheese and ice cream) are avoiding the diet’s richest potential sources of calcium;
  
• Consumers that suffer from milk protein allergy or lactose malabsorption could be sacrificing calcium availability by not consuming milk and dairy products. Moreover, lactose in its own right enhances calcium absorption;
  
• Due to the low per capita consumption of milk and dairy products throughout much of Asia, the availability of calcium through normal dietary means is severely limited. Thus the reason for the high incidence of osteoporosis in Asia. By comparison, over 70% of dietary calcium is provided from dairy products in Western Europe and North America;
  
• Post-menopausal women are particularly susceptible to the onset of osteoporosis. This is because oestrogen has a positive effect in the protection of bone tissue, and without oestrogen replacement therapy this important contributory factor is lost;
  
• Lactating mothers have an additional demand for calcium. This is a vital time to ensure that dietary calcium levels are boosted;
  
• A sedentary lifestyle compounds the risk of osteoporosis. More particularly, exercise is important for maintaining bone strength and bone size;
  
• Some research points to caffeine intake, alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking as increasing the risk of osteoporosis;
  
• A high fibre diet can have limitations on calcium absorption due to the fact that dietary fibre can inhibit calcium absorption;
  
• A diet high in the consumption of phytates (e.g., consumption of seeds, nuts & grains) or oxalates (e.g., contained in beets, spinach & rhubarb) inhibits effective absorption of calcium; and
  
• A diet deficient in vitamin D can also negatively impact the effectiveness of dietary calcium because this element is necessary to aid calcium absorption. Vitamin D is notably derived from a range of animal products (e.g., egg yolks, liver). It is also sourced by exposure to sunshine, and therefore incarcerated individuals and others that do not get sufficient natural sunshine can be at risk. Milk fortified with vitamin D has long been a regulated practice in the United States.

The single factor driving the development of calcium fortification of food products has been the growing international recognition of public health concerns over osteoporosis. The other health benefits have, until recently, been quite secondary as strategic marketing and competitive issues.

Calcium fortification of food and beverage products has occurred across a wide spectrum of products:

• In some cases combining with other nutritional elements to give a more complete functional food offering. Take, for example, orange juice. Calcium fortification of orange juice has been apparent in US and other markets for some time, with an 8-ounce serving of orange juice contributing 300 mg of calcium. Marketing strategists could also position such a product as a uniquely refreshing and widely appealing nutraceutical item, synergistically delivering a significant source of folate (if consumed by pregnant women, folate greatly reduces the chance of neural tube defect) and potassium (particularly useful in maintaining normal bodily fluid and electrolyte balance);
  
• Fortifying staples in order to increase the propensity for consumption. Bread and related goods is a dietary staple through much of the world.
  
  
  
  

  “Fortifying bread with calcium carbonate increases the calcium availability in the diet”

  Fortifying bread with calcium carbonate increases the calcium availability in the diet. This can have great opportunities for increasing calcium consumption in markets where the natural availability at consumer level of dairy calcium sources are restricted due to cold chain inefficiencies, pricing issues, etc. Moreover, sourcing the calcium by using milk ingredients in the bread that may not necessarily incur these same problems (lactose, or a whey fraction with a high calcium level) can have further physical properties depending on the ingredient used. This could include using the milk source as one or other of: a moistening agent in the formulation; a low intensity sweetener; a binding agent; a bulking agent; and/or a browning agent; and
  
• Fortifying non-dairy products in order to formulate them on a more comparative basis with their dairy-based competition. The calcium fortification of soy beverages, soy yoghurts and soy desserts, for example, is a designer food approach in which the nutritionally questionable lactose and milk fat are purposefully left out, the positive aspect of soy nutrition are assumed, and other factors such as calcium status are ‘engineered in’. This positions the product as an acceptable and nutritionally superior offering to dairy alternatives.

So while calcium fortification has been evident in various products that are deficient in calcium, it is somewhat paradoxical that milk and dairy products – those goods that have the highest natural level of dietary calcium – are leading the way in terms of market success in terms of calcium fortified consumer products. This evident market success of calcium fortified dairy products is based upon a natural association of dairy and calcium in the consumers mind. Examples include:

• Cheddar cheese, fortified with calcium in Australia;
  
• Calcium fortified ice cream evident in the United States; and
  
• Calcium fortification of milk powders and market milk, an increasingly ubiquitous event as a product differentiation strategy and brand positioning justification.

So what lessons are there for food manufacturers who have seen the success of the calcium fortification phenomenon? Simply, there is a wonderful opportunity to think about food items as much more than nutritional items. A pharma-food perspective can be undertaken that will give alternate strategic and competitive positioning benefits.

And the food marketer does not have to stop at simple fortification practices. Designer foods, pharma-food formulations, foods that address a physiological requirement… the possibilities become endless. With a global pharmaceutical market estimated at over US$ 330 billion, and increasing at almost 5% per annum, the opportunities for food marketers to tap into a hitherto generally ‘closed’ market is becoming much more evident.

As an essential aspect of this situation, food companies need to start exploiting new strategic opportunities, including:

• Alliances with pharmaceutical companies in order to optimise market synergies that this beckoning market entry point has to offer;
  
• Penetrating new trade channels (such as pharmacies, hospitals) with pharma-food products that in turn open up an opportunity for access to be gained with traditional or mainstream food products;
  
• Brand extension from the traditional food arena into pharma-fields, which in turn pass back a high level of credence to the traditional food products;
  
• Premium pricing of food products marketed through pharmacy trade channels and away from the more price combatant retail supermarket multiples. This recognises the fact that purchasers are less price sensitive when shopping at a pharmacy and overtly buying products that are directed towards health and well being for their families;
  
• A higher level of probability that health providers will recommend a product sold through a pharmacy, even though the product is not a prescription or drug item; and
  
• The introduction of pharmacies into mainstream retail roles, somewhat diminishing the orthodox and specialised role of the pharmacy.

This article was contributed by Shainwright Consulting and Research Group, an Australian consumer and industrial food marketing intelligence organisation specialising in global and Asia Pacific Rim market studies and analyses. It first appeared in Asia Food Tech, Vol. 2 No. 3.

Further inquiries to Shainwright about ad-hoc studies can be made by e-mail to whitco@bigpond.com