Ingredients with Ayurvedic benefits grow in popularity
Nielsen found that much like how stevia and monk fruit stepped in to help meet consumers’ desires for healthy sweeteners, several ingredients have come to market that are playing a role in Ayurvedic medicine, one of the world’s oldest holistic healing systems.
To help food manufacturers and retailers zero in on the ingredients with the most retail promise, Nielsen and the New Hope Network’s NEXT data and insights team analyzed a set of 30 ingredients to assess their growth trajectories. They found that much like how stevia and monk fruit stepped in to help meet consumers’ desires for healthy sweeteners, several ingredients have come to market that are playing a role in Ayurvedic medicine, one of the world’s oldest holistic healing systems. For example, turmeric, ashwagandha, and moringa are superfoods that offer medicinal benefits because of their Ayurvedic principles.
Among the ingredients with Ayurvedic benefits, turmeric is the most mature. Notably, it’s found in more than 100 products across the store, and the categories with those products are delivering strong sales gains. Across the store, sales of products with turmeric increased 3% in the year ended April 7, 2018.
Turmeric’s anti-inflammatory and antioxidant attributes have turned this medicinal spice into the industry’s hottest ingredient ($11 billion in sales in the year ended July 7, 2018), making it a safe bet for any FMCG player wanting to fit in. Compared with turmeric, ashwagandha and moringa, which are also known for their Ayurvedic benefits, have some catching up to do, as they are still in their innovation stages.
Ashwagandha’s stress coping, enhanced brand function, and stable mood attributes holds burgeoning momentum, but breadth and growth lag behind moringa’s emerging status. And moringa is showing signs of ingredient prodigy, dethroning kale’s reign as the most nutrient dense green. As a result, its quickly finding its way into far more products.
While appearing in a quickly growing number of products, moringa only has a 3% U.S. household penetration rate. Turmeric, by comparison, has a 97% penetration rate. Given Americans’ continued exploration into deeper health and wellness areas, however, brands have an opportunity to capitalize on the benefits of both moringa and ashwagandha through increased consumer awareness initiatives and product labeling.