Sound Bites With Melissa Joy Dobbins

As more consumers approach health and wellness in a holistic way, functionality is being sought in a highly complementary way via supplements and functional foods and beverages. Historically, beverages were a more culturally acceptable vehicle for functionality, but now we see as much or greater interest in obtaining specific benefits from functional foods. While supplements used to be largely relied upon as "insurance" in case healthy eating regimens weren't enough, now more consumers use supplements for targeted benefits, and that's especially true of younger consumers. There's considerable room for growth in functional foods/beverages as there are much larger proportions of consumers who are interested in trying them for a variety of benefits than are currently using them for those benefits. On this podcast episode, Dr. Shelley Balanko shares new insights about supplements and functional foods, including the impact of COVID-19 on consumers' interest in benefits like immunity and digestion, based on a new r