NY Times Questions Function in Functional Beverages

NEW YORK--On the cover of the Sunday, May 27 edition of The New York Times (www.nytimes.com), an article on functional beverages has the category sounding like a consortium of snake oil companies. In "Stressed Out? Bad Knee? Relief Promised in a Juice," authors Julian Barnes and Greg Winter explored a market that has doubled to $4.7 billion from 1997 to 2000. In the article, they touch on the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) role in regulating functional beverages ("Officials said that they had not meddled with most products because there had been no reports of consumers being seriously hurt by them"); the leaders in the category (such as Pepsico's SoBe, AriZona Beverage Co. and Snapple); and the up-and-comers trying to get their share of the pie (including Coke's partnership with Procter & Gamble to create Elation, a senior-targeted beverage containing 1,500 mg of glucosamine).

After the article came out (and was picked up nationally on news wires), John Bello, founder of SoBe (www.sobebev.com), told Insider, "There's not a lot of science behind a lot of this stuff. But at the levels [of herbs] being used in [functional beverages], it's not a big issue."

However, that is not to say that these drinks are not health-minded. The authors focused on herbal ingredients, rather than other nutrients, such as vitamins and calcium, in these functional beverages. "Most of the herbs we use are GRAS anyway, so what's the problem?" Bello questioned, adding that SoBe does not put efficacious amounts of herbs in its products because it wants customers to drink two or three a day. "We don't want people to worry about getting over-supplemented [from one beverage]."

Barnes and Winter also summarized the potential danger of functional beverages, especially those containing ma huang (ephedra) and guarana, stating that Weider Nutrition International is in the midst of a lawsuit over such a drink that may have led to a 21-year-old's cardiac arrest and resulting brain damage. However, the authors added that few functional beverages use this combination of ingredients.

Currently, the newest drinks to join the functional craze include Taisho Pharmaceuticals' Lipovitan B3, for energy and mental acuity, and the Stone Foundation's Joint Juice, for protecting cartilage.