This week’s big news across the global nutrition and supplements industries includes new tests of B12 supplements by NOW Foods, L’Oréal evaluating supplements that target skin and hair aging, and Bioplus Life Sciences’s approval for algal DHA in infant formula.
NOW’s testing of Methyl B-12 brands
Illinois-based NOW reports that 56% of the Methyl B12 products purchased on Amazon met or exceeded label claim (14 out of 25 products).
While the results show a lower failure rate than other tests by NOW of expensive supplement categories, the difficulty associated with analyzing this vitamin B12 form underscores the need for more robust testing and quality control measures, the company said.
NOW chose to focus on Methyl B12 supplements for this round of testing—its 20th round in its award-winning quality testing program—because of the high cost of the ingredient and the potential failure of its potency label claim.
For previous rounds of testing, NOW worked with third-party labs to cross-reference the results. Katie Banaszewski, senior director of quality at NOW, told NutraIngredients that while the company did send samples to a respected third-party lab, the results “were so inconsistent that it didn’t make sense to share them.”
“That was why NOW is calling on the technical side of the industry to collaborate on test methods that can be consistently reproduced for this material,” she added.
L’Oréal explores supplements that for skin and hair aging
French skincare and cosmetics giant L’Oréal is interested in oral supplements that target hallmarks of aging, such as mitochondrial dysfunction and cellular senescence.
Speaking to NutraIngredients-Asia on the sidelines of Founders Longevity Forum held in Singapore, Luc Aguilar, R&D director of Microbiome, Exposome and Longevity Domains at L’Oréal, said: “Our main business today is targeting the features of aging—skin and hair agiing.
“There are many supplements on the market and we need to be sure that we are providing an added value with the supplement that we are going to select for beauty benefits and this is currently under investigation,” he said.
“What we aim is to change skin trajectory over the years, meaning targeting as early as possible the biological damages related to skin. And this could be achieved by mainly targeting mitochondrial dysfunction, cell metabolism and even to an extent senescence cells. So any supplements that target those root cause of aging would be under consideration.”
Bioplus Life Sciences’s algal DHA approved for use in infant formula
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) approved the use of India’s Bioplus Life Sciences' docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) oil and powder, derived from Schizochytrium sp. ATCC-20889, for use in infant formula.
“Thanks to this EFSA approval, Bioplus will now become one of the few approved supply sources for a sustainable, plant-based DHA into infant nutrition, offering an alternative to traditional fish-based DHA,” Marc Lesieur, vice president of business development at Bioplus Life Sciences, told NutraIngredients.
Bioplus' microalgal fermentation technology offers a cleaner and more sustainable alternative to traditional fish-derived DHA, he added.
