Las Palmas, Spain (May 2019) – Vitafoods Europe expands its network and sales opportunities for both exhibitors and visitors each year. With an ever-increasing number of interactive sessions from presentations to educational presentations, three days flew by.
Nektium highlighted its caffeine replacement ingredient Zynamite^®, which was launched in 2018 at Vitafoods. The patent-pending, standardized botanical extract from mango leaves has significant increased performance effects on mental and physical energy. Nektium has already conducted six clinical trials that demonstrate its effectiveness. “Most caffeine replacement ingredients are studied for a single application while Zynamite^® has been proven to be a novel, completely natural nootropic and at the same time increases sports performance significantly. This makes Zynamite^® very attractive for customers. Athletes these days combine products for mental energy and sports performance, both products usually contain caffeine. Zynamite^® is a caffeine-free, two-in-one solution studied for both effects”, says Debbie Thoma, Marketing Manager at Nektium.
A number of global companies have already included this innovation in their product formulations, which was honored with the Nutraingredients Award the second year in a row. In 2018, Zynamite^® received the award for “Ingredient of the Year: Sports Nutrition”, whereas this year it received the “Nutrition Research Project Award”. “It is great to be recognized for the research that we’ve done on Zynamite^®. We have come a long way, but seeing the growing customer interest and more and more products on the market containing our ingredient is incredibly rewarding!”, says Dr. Julia Wiebe, R&D Director at Nektium.
Caffeinated products are still popular as the ingredient is well known for its stimulant effect, however there is a shift in the industry as people are becoming more aware of the negative side-effects and also because of increasing numbers of people with a high caffeine intake every day suffering anxiety, jitters and increased blood pressure. Despite the strikingly similar brain activation activity that Zynamite^® has compared to caffeine, the mechanism of action is different, resulting in a synergy between the two ingredients but none of the negative side-effects of caffeine. This is only one of the reasons why the ingredient is attracting the attention of energy supplement formulators who often are looking to reduce or replace the caffeine in their products. “As a result of the negative publicity on caffeine, caffeine replacement products are becoming increasingly popular in our sector, however when taking a closer look, many of those products still contain alkaloids similar to caffeine and therefore have the same mechanism of action as caffeine. Zynamite^® can replace caffeine completely, or just part of it, taking advantage of the synergistic effect between the two products”, says Dr. Julia Wiebe R&D Director at Nektium.
Zynamite^® was yet again a hot topic at the show, nonetheless Nektium’s other showcased branded ingredients appeared just as interesting to the visitors. Xanthigen^®, Nektium’s weight loss formulation based on brown seaweed and pomegranate seed oil as well as Rhodiolife^®, a standardized extract from Rhodiola rosea, wild-grown and sourced from the Altai mountains in Siberia were also featured.
All in all, a trend that was omnipresent at Vitafoods is that customers are increasingly moving away from synthetic products and prefer to scout for natural ingredients for their product formulations. Combining traditional knowledge, science and nature to make outstanding botanical extracts is what Nektium stands for so we welcome this trend!