Inside out or upside down?

Related tags Nutrition Green tea

There is money to be made from feeding your face, but the success of beauty foods and supplements will depend both on the state of the economy and the health claims regulation, says Paul Gander

A year into its launch, Nestlé's Glowelle beauty drink appears to be successfully resisting the signs of ageing. Trying to have it all as a self-declared 'daily beauty drink dietary supplement', the brand cultivates an image more attuned to the high-end perfumery department than supermarket food aisles. Appropriately enough, its main US outlet is beauty and fashion retailer Neiman Marcus.

Nestlé will say only that the brand is "doing well", with distribution expanded to include some pharmacy and cosmetics chains and a handful of online channels.

Marketed as part of a daily routine, and available in powder stick-pack as well as ready-to-drink formats, the product keeps its scientific credentials to a minimum. Ingredients include vitamins, phytonutrients and botanicals. The statements made about its effects, Nestlé acknowledges, have not been evaluated by the US Food and Drug Administration.

At German-based research and consultancy company Analyze & Realize, president Joerg Gruenwald contrasts the different approaches taken across the 'beauty-from-within' category. "Glowelle's beauty claims are only based on an ingredient research library and consumer self-assessment," he notes.

On the other hand, he says: "Products such as Innéov or Oenobiol are well-substantiated, based on placebo-controlled clinical trials in correlation with subjective evaluations." Brands like Innéov are boxed up in a dose format like other supplements, albeit upmarket ones, and are sold through pharmacies. Glowelle is positioned more as a lifestyle product than a supplement.

There is further evidence that brand-owners big and small are more willing to dip their toes into the tepid water of soft claims than the chilly discipline of science.

Literally into water. In the UK, recent launches include Inside Out Beauty's Sip drinks. Here, the brand's virtues are largely based on the unparalleled hydrating effects of one key ingredient. As director Kate Cazenove says: "Ultimately, there's nothing better for your skin than water." "We're not saying you'll look like Kate Moss in 10 days, though there are benefits for the skin," she says. "We want to say, here's a lovely compound of botanicals and antioxidants that we've put in water."

Like Sip, Daniels Group's Ju juice-based brand makes no specific claims. Launched in the UK this spring, the names of the three variants - Skin Glow, Hair Shine and Nail Strong - speak for themselves. Again, there appears to have been no rigorous testing to substantiate their benefits.

Dairy formats as well as drinks have been trialled. At Leatherhead Food Research (LFR), head of nutrition Fiona Angus points to a flurry of new entrants between 2007 and 2008 before the recession set in.

These included Emmi's Beauty Case and Danone's Essensis, both yogurts. Essensis used ingredients such as green tea extract under the strapline: 'nourish your skin from the inside'. Its withdrawal a few months ago gave the category more of a kick from the inside.

But it was not the first victim to fall off the catwalk of beauty brands. As Angus points out, Parmalat's Jeunesse skimmed milk product, containing CoQ10, vitamin E and antioxidants, predated Essensis but didn't last long before bosses pulled the plug. Parmalat says: "This was a great range, maybe ahead of its time." Of beauty-from-within in general, it adds: "Today, for reasons of price, consumers are certainly less interested in this idea."

== Managing expectations ==

So what evidence is there that European consumers want these products? On the face of it, research carried out last year by Datamonitor is not encouraging. Globally, an average of just 31% of consumers agreed with the statement 'I feel under pressure to look good'. In the UK, this fell to 25%, while the German figure was just 11.6%.

In fact, around Europe only Russia and Spain scored higher than the global average. "This suggests that beauty is not as big an issue in Europe as it is elsewhere, for example the Americas and Asia Pacific," says analyst Mark Whalley.

However, data collected by ingredients importer Cornelius on behalf of Kemin - a leading supplier of lutein - reveals that 47% of adult British consumers would consider taking a skin health supplement. In the 20-39 age group, this rises to 66%.

Joy Thomas, business manager for health & food at Cornelius, has kept an eye on several cosmeceuticals. She has noticed, for instance, that co-enzyme Q10 is far more widely applied to drinks and dairy products in Central Europe than in the UK. Soluble CoQ10 produced by Slovenian manufacturer Valens is commonly accompanied by a skin health message on these types of product, she says. "The science regarding beauty is newer, so there haven't been as many studies." As evidence that beauty benefits can be given just as hard a scientific edge, she quotes the "amazing results" of a 2006 study into lutein carried out at Naples University.

At fellow lutein supplier Cognis, head of innovation and new ingredients Sybille Buchwald-Werner confirms that this is one of the most thoroughly-researched cosmeceuticals. But she is critical of a tendency to apply the same level of scrutiny to food ingredients as to pharmaceuticals.

== Beauty and health claims ==

And she is not alone. Ingredients firms and food manufacturers alike have been dismayed by the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA's) decisions regarding health claims. And where the declared benefits are purely aesthetic, the prospects do not look good. Many of the beauty-orientated claims, says Angus at LFR, stand "no chance" of being accepted.

Says Gruenwald: "Currently, it is not clear if 'beauty foods' will be regulated under the health claims regulation, and where 'health' begins and the 'beauty claim' ends. Probably, it will depend on the cleverness of the individual wording."

But is a hard health claim essential? Whalley at Datamonitor thinks so: "Consumers are more confident with a product with a tangible claim." With a new or less common ingredient, this might be the case, or where the active ingredient is better-known in another context.

But for some ingredients, it may not be necessary to spell out a specific link. Consumers are likely to know some other Cognis ingredients, she says, such as beta carotene, vitamin E and green tea extracts, from a cosmetics context.

According to Datamonitor, that link could be taken further by creating complementary 'inside' and 'outside' beauty products, perhaps under a single brand.

Thomas at Cornelius believes this idea of a dual inside-and-outside strategy deserves more attention, and could work with combined supplements and creams using, for instance, lutein and CoQ10.

Could Nestlé and L'Oréal's scientific collaboration on the Innéov range of supplements be a sign of things to come? Earlier this decade, says Buchwald-Werner, there was a feeling that this strategy would only work if the same ingredients were used throughout, so consumers could understand the link. "Now, the belief is it's not necessary to use the same ingredient, but it is important to have the same claim."

Even Nestlé may not know whether the strategy behind an Innéov or a Glowelle holds the greater promise. There is a distinct contrast here in terms of format and presentation, collaboration, science, sales channels and geographical distribution.

A contrast, no doubt, in terms of margins, repurchase and overall sales performance, too. And that is one set of evidence that this multinational and others will be keen to get their hands on. FIHN

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