Beyond Vitamins: Solving pH, Efficacy, and Flavor Challenges in Functional Beverages

Functional beverages are undergoing continuous changes, challenging brands to create complex product formulations that fulfill consumer health needs and flavor preferences. In this interview, Isabel Mirfakhraie, technical marketing associate at Imbibe, discusses how brands are balancing the the latest trends while considering flavor modulation, format, and efficacy.

For the full interview and more insights on overcoming formulation hurdles, flavor modulation, and future trends, click here.

This interview is part of our Last Bite for our May issue of Nutritional Outlook. Read the full article for a look into more beverage trends.

A transcript of this conversation can be found below.

Erin McEvoy: Hello everyone. I'm here with Isabel, Technical Marketing Associate at Imbibe, to discuss recent trends and innovations in functional beverages. Thank you for joining us today, Isabel.

Isabel Mirfakhraie: Of course. Thank you for having me, Erin. I'm excited to speak a little bit more about what's going on in the nutritional beverage space. And, yeah, talk a little bit more about what's trending and functional beverages specifically.

McEvoy: So, jumping right in, nutritional brands are increasingly moving beyond basic vitamin combinations toward more complex bioactives like cellular health ingredients. What are the primary formulation hurdles when trying to maintain the efficacy of these compounds and how is Imbibe overcoming them?

Mirfakhraie: Yeah, it's a really good question. I feel like one that is really important right now. A lot of consumers are really interested not just in what exactly is on their pack, what ingredients are in their pack, but also do they actually work?

And, you know, as consumers become more educated, regarding, you know, functional ingredients and their actual benefits, it's brands' jobs to really communicate those, those benefits and also our jobs as developers to make sure that they are efficacious. So to address this, you know, Imbibe really considers the full beverage system as a holistic system. So we're really formulating our beverages around the active functional ingredient. So that means, you know, choosing the right format or matrix, so that might be thinking about, whether our functional ingredient's being dissolved in, you know, an emulsion or is it a dispersion, to understanding when it's appropriate to use different formats.

Also managing pH is a huge one. I mean, a lot of these active, highly functional ingredients are really pH dependent and can, their efficacy can really switch and change depending on the pH of the system that they're in. So that's another key way that we maintain efficacy for a lot of these functional ingredients. Another is managing the interactions between specific functionals and actives.

So, you know, understanding exactly like what is, what is composing the entire system. Sometimes a lot of functional ingredients don't work well together. So thinking about, making sure to, to really understand how those interactions occur. So that efficacy is, you know, at, for at the forefront.

The other thing, you know, when we think about formulating these highly functional beverages is what does it taste like? I mean, that's really our key focus, is, is thinking about taste and formulating a beverage that hits the marks for our consumers and our customers, but also actually tastes good and something that customers and consumers will want to continue to repeat buy, repeat consume. So as for mitigating some of the off notes from some of these ingredients, I mean, you mentioned cellular health ingredients. This is kind of a newer space, but a lot of these ingredients, some that come to mind are NAD+ precursors, or coenzyme Q10 is another one that's become really popular and trendy. You know, these are really interesting kind of emerging functional ingredients, but they do come with their own associated off notes. So they tend to be a little bit chemically a little bit "vitaminy," sour even. And, and usually they have some sort of like bitter linger. And so within that space specifically, even we're seeing functional off notes.

So that's really when we start having to think about, you know, utilizing taste modulation technology and taste modulation tools, which is something that Imbibe is, you know, that is at the forefront of what we do. And we do that along with kind of crafting these complimentary flavor systems that work really in a synergistic way with these functional ingredients so that we can create a product that is efficacious but also taste delicious, really.