James Collins, head nutritionist at Arsenal Football Club and director of Performance Nutrition, said it was crucial for manufacturers to understand how techniques and knowledge at the elite end of sport could be applied to everyday active nutrition products. That was not least because consumer knowledge had soared.
“There is a real thirst for knowledge out there. It is also so readily accessible and this is really influencing the market,” he told the Advances in Sport and Active Nutrition Conference held in central London yesterday (May 22).
He said many people visiting the Harley Street clinic he worked alongside were increasingly looking for more bespoke solutions. That frequently stemmed from the greater use of biomarkers to assess personal nutrient levels, even among amateur, yet dedicated, athletes.
Two areas that he suggested were ripe for innovations were tackling iron and vitamin D deficiencies.
Iron drain
“Iron is the same old story, but even at the elite level we are seeing athletes with high training levels experiencing iron drain. Unless we can increase iron, we see people becoming very lethargic, particularly at the end of a long season. We need to find different modalities of iron, maybe in liquid form,” said Collins.
In relation to vitamin D, he said elite sport practitioners were always looking for “different solutions” in this area, as were many amateur athletes.
“We are seeing more and more people coming off the street to get vitamin D tested, which strengthens the need for innovation in this area,” he added.
He also predicted that there would need to be a greater focus on “periodising nutrition” and developing products that allowed people to prepare for both resistance and endurance training – not one or the other – during the same day.
Antioxidants are also getting a great deal of attention, he added.
While a lot of studies showed antioxidants could reduce free radicals and lower stress response, he said they could also “dampen muscle adaptation too”.
He added: “Research is now starting to question this and, while noting the antioxidant benefits, asking when is it best to use them in a training cycle.”
Keep it simple
Collins, who also worked with Team GB at last year’s Olympics, said the challenge for any sports nutrition manufacturer was to make a product part of the athlete’s routine and to keep the messaging simple.
He said psychology played a key role for consumers in the sector and there were huge opportunities if firms could get their products “to stick” as part of the training process.
Likewise, particularly at an elite level, those products which didn’t overload the packaging with claims and were targeted to a particular function or strategy tended to be the most popular, he told delegates.
The main advantage for manufacturers, though, is that practitioners and consumers in this sector are always keen to discover the next big thing to give them a competitive edge.
“People are always looking for the next step and to find answers to see what can be moved on. The active nutrition sector has moved away from simply fuelling and recovery and this is creating really exciting opportunities,” said Collins.