New High-Potency Ginger Ingredient Meets Growing Dietary Supplement Demand

Ginger is skyrocketing as both a flavor and a dietary supplement ingredient. For food and beverage, flavor houses this year deem ginger one of the biggest trending flavors. Condition-specific ginger research is also flourishing. With this timing in mind, OmniActive Health Technologies (Morristown, NJ) unveiled a new high-potency ginger dietary supplement ingredient at Natural Products Expo West.

“If you look at the market for ginger right now, ginger has been studied for so many benefits,” Lynda Doyle, OmniActive’s vice president, global marketing, told Nutritional Outlook. The company estimates that PubMed studies on ginger rose 693% in the last 15 years compared to 1991-2000.

A new HerbalEGram article published by the American Botanical Council (Austin, TX)¹ confirms that most modern clinical research focuses on ginger’s effects on nausea related to pregnancy or chemotherapy, but it adds there is also clinical interest in other gastrointestinal (GI) issues like irritable bowel syndrome and non-GI issues such as menstruation-related pain. Nutritional Outlook, which named ginger an ingredient to watch in 2014, highlighted five recent significant ginger studies related to diabetes, menstrual pain, and arthritis, as well as significant studies on pregnancy-related nausea, chemotherapy-related nausea, and ginger for migraines. For more on ginger, read this comprehensive article we published last year.

With so much unfolding around ginger, ginger supplement sales are rising. Sales in 2013 sat at $64 million compared to $39 million 2006, says OmniActive, quoting Nutrition Business Journal 2014 estimates.²

Ginger’s primary active component is gingerols. OmniActive’s new Gingever ingredient is standardized to 30% bioactives, including a minimum 20% gingerols. Doyle says the company’s supercritical fluid extraction excludes harsh solvents “so it’s a very clean product.” The raw-material ginger is FDA-acknowledged GRAS and from OmniActive sister company Kancor Ingredients (Mumbai). The company is targeting Gingever’s anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits for heart, immune, joint, GI, and cognitive support, among others. It is suited for soft gels.

References

1. “Food as Medicine: Ginger (Zingiber officinale, Zingiberaceae),” HerbalEGram, vol. 12, no. 3 (March 2015). http://cms.herbalgram.org/heg/volume12/03March/March2015_FaM_Ginger.html, Accessed March 16, 2015.
2. NBJ 2014 Global Business Report, Nutrition Business Journal

Jennifer Grebow
Editor-in-Chief
Nutritional Outlook magazine
jennifer.grebow@ubm.com

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