Eat yourself pretty

If anyone can crack the beauty foods market, Danone can. With Actimel and Activia, the intrepid dairy giant has already shown that it has a knack for identifying an opportunity and turning it into a profitable functional foods category.

But the jury is still out on whether this formula is going to work third time round, with beauty food brand Essensis.

Essensis was launched in France, Spain, Italy and Belgium in spring 2007 amid a blaze of publicity. But according to Euromonitor's packaged foods manager Lee Linthicum, it hasn't exactly set the world on fire. "We've got sales data for the first six to nine months of 2007 and sales were under target in both France and Belgium," he says.

Other commentators are slightly more positive about the yoghurt's performance to date. Carla Ogeia, trends and innovation consultant with Mintel GNPD (global new products database), says: "From what we can gather from GNPD IRIS data, the Essensis range got off to a reasonably good start in France, Italy and Spain, and has tailed off since. However, it appears to have stabilised at a high level - especially considering it is a fairly niche product with a small target audience. In France, the plain variety averages sales of around 20,000 four-pack units a week."

A time-sensitive issue

Some observers believe that one of the problems with Essensis is the length of time it takes for consumers to see the benefits. Danone's promotional material states that you need to eat a pot a day for four to six weeks to see its effect on cellular regeneration. But Julian Mellentin, executive director of the Centre for Food and Health Studies and a consultant on functional foods, isn't convinced consumers are willing to wait that long. "One of the reasons the energy drink and digestive health products categories are so successful is because you feel the benefit really quickly, whereas with beauty foods, you don't."

Joy Thomas, industry manager, health and food, with UK ingredient distributor Cornelius, agrees this is an issue. "People want to see a benefit, and if they try it a few times and nothing happens, they won't continue with it," she says.

She also questions whether a yoghurt is the best format for encouraging compliance. "If you already have a yoghurt every day, that's fine, but if not... maybe a drink format would be better."

Mellentin also thinks that consumers are more likely to incorporate a drink than a "solid food" into their daily diet. "I think one of the reasons is that if you eat a solid food, it's part of a meal or a snack, and it's got to take the place of something else you'd normally consume, whereas people seem to be able to fit beverages into an existing meal occasion."

Persuading consumers to buy into a concept that demands long-term loyalty is clearly not an easy task, but then it's not impossible either, says Linthicum.

"All is not lost for Essensis," he says. "It's still doing better than Parmalat's Jeunesse. But it's a gradual process, not a sudden explosion whereby suddenly everyone's eating beauty foods."

The other point to bear in mind when judging Essensis' performance is that it was never going to be a euro500M a year, mass-market brand.

"It's a niche product, aimed at an exclusively female audience, so the fact that sales don't look that fantastic compared to Activia or Actimel isn't all that surprising, as they have a much broader appeal. Essensis has created a lot of 'noise' in the area of beauty foods and has made a good attempt at establishing some scientific credentials, which takes it way beyond the teas and infusions with beauty positioning that have been around for a while but have no proper studies behind them," says Ogeia.

So what does this say about the market potential for beauty foods?

On paper, the future looks rosy. Leatherhead Food International's recent Beauty Foods report, admits that it is hard to put a value on the global market for beauty foods, with estimates ranging between €700M and €3.6bn. But it says all sources agree that the market is seeing double digit annual growth, demonstrating that market potential is very strong.

Mintel's Ogeia reckons the strongest markets are likely to be Southern and Eastern Europe, as demonstrated by several recent beauty launches in Russia. Mellentin, meanwhile, says companies are likely to look at France, Italy, Spain and Belgium first, on the basis that women in these countries spend more on cosmetics and personal care than anywhere else.

In terms of product formats, Mellentin believes supplements have the potential to be bigger than foods and beverages. "Supplements have a huge advantage because you can put a large, effective dose in a supplement and don't have to worry about how it tastes," he says.

This is backed up by LycoRed's Udi Alroy, who says supplements are the current vehicle for most beauty products. "Most of LycoRed Lyc-O-Mato sales are in the supplement industry," he says.

Beyond supplements, most commentators agree that dairy and beverages are likely to be the main application areas for beauty products, with products like collagen-fortified marshmallows, which sell well in Japan, unlikely to cut it with European consumers.

Indeed, the main barriers to bringing beauty products to market lie not in a shortage of ideas - product developers only have to look east to the sophisticated Japanese market for inspiration - but in consumer scepticism.

In a poll of UK adults by Harris Interactive, 55% did not believe that beauty foods have a positive effect on appearance, with only 2% believing in a positive effect.

And who can blame them? As Gillian Berry, group marketing manager with S Black, points out: "On the current market there are a few supplements that support beauty claims with clinical data. However, there are larger numbers of beauty foods without any real substantiation."

So what are the ingredients that are giving beauty foods a bad name?

Collagen gets the thumbs down from Dr Joerg Gruenwald, president of analyze & realize, a German consulting firm for producers and distributors of pharmaceutical, dietetic and cosmetic products. "Products that contain collagen for ingestion among their active ingredients have, in our opinion, no basis in science, as it is doubtful if orally taken, collagen has any effect on the skin at all," he says.

This assertion is backed up by Mellentin: "You eat collagen, but does that necessarily transfer to skin elasticity? Aloe vera is another one. It's great for digestive benefits but a beauty benefit? That's quite questionable."

Products with sound scientific substantiation, in Dr Gruenwald's view, include Inversion Femme and Inversion Homme by Inversion Laboratoires, as well as the Merz Spezial Dragées on sale in Germany.

Mellentin, meanwhile, thinks the science around high antioxidant products is quite robust. "I think the reason brands like Tropicana have gone for antioxidants and cellular renewal is because you can make the link to antioxidants preventing oxidative damage and there's lots of science around that," he says.

German firm Plantextrakt offers plant extracts such as green tea and roobois, whose antioxidative potential, measured by their catechin and polyphenol content, has been analysed in a number of scientific studies.

Consumer scepticism about beauty foods is not helped by the fact that most of them carry 'soft' claims, such as: 'helps maintain healthy skin', rather than: 'reduces wrinkles within 28 days'. "I would not recommend our customers making hard claims with our extracts because we simply have not carried out studies that are that detailed," says Oliver Hehn, head of product management at Plantextrakt.

According to Leatherhead Food International, the EU regulatory climate may be contributing to manufacturers' reluctance to overstate benefits. It says that firms are waiting to see how legislation will be applied to beauty foods. However, Gruenwald confirms that beauty foods do fall under the remit of the EU Regulation on Nutrition and Health Claims.

While this should help restore consumer confidence in the efficacy of beauty foods, it's unlikely to give manufacturers licence to make bolder claims. For example, if approved, a claim for aloe vera could read: 'helps maintain healthy skin'.

While the premium price tags that can be commanded by beauty foods and beverages hold a strong allure, as the Essensis example demonstrates, even with water-tight science and marketing muscle, the road to launching a beauty food product is fraught with obstacles and consumers are yet to be convinced that they really can eat themselves beautiful.