Making Gains in Performance Nutrition

Athletes need more than just a multivitamin or mineral supplement to improve and maintain fitness levels. According to Nena Dockery, technical services manager, Stratum Nutrition—ESM Technologies (supplier of the joint support ingredient NEM), all athletes, as well as anyone who engages in physical activity, should be taking ingredients for joint support, muscle recovery and digestion. Some well-researched, trending ingredients for sports nutrition include creatine, whey protein, amino acids, ribose, choline and more.

Driven in part by the category’s relative novelty, especially among the growing legions of casual athletes and exercisers who are increasingly experimenting with sports nutrition products, the category is expected to post strong growth in both developing and developed markets in the near future. Through 2019, Euromonitor International forecasts growth of 27 percent in constant 2014 U.S. dollars (excluding foreign exchange fluctuations and inflation) to $2.5 billion in retail value sales globally.

Significant growth in any sector can also affect the regulatory landscape; and for sports nutrition specifically, regulators should pay close attention to products labeled “natural," according to Saumil Maheshvari, market analyst, Orgenetics Inc. Maheshvari said that while products labeled “organic" are well-regulated, the claim “natural" is not. “Too many companies claim their products are natural, when in fact they are synthetic based or derived," Maheshvari explained. “So with stricter regulation on that word, we can eliminate and weed out companies that are falsely advertising and duping consumers."

Increasing consumer demands for specific types sports nutrition ingredients, coupled with growing bodies of research backing both traditional and up-and-coming performance ingredients—from whey protein to beetroot juice—show promise for innovative companies looking to make gains within the sports nutrition performance sector.

Read the full article, “Fueling Performance," in INSIDER’s Sports Nutrition Content Library. And for more market data on protein, one of sports nutrition’s star ingredients, be sure to attend the Trends in Protein presentation at Ingredient Marketplace on Wednesday, April 8, in Orlando.