Last week’s big news included Tylenol launching joint health dietary supplement, creatine RTD progress, Thai Union’s new tuna-derived marine collagen.
Tylenol: From pain relief OTC to joint health DS
The makers of Tylenol launched Proactive Support, a dietary supplement specifically designed to promote joint comfort and mobility.
The new supplement features TamaFlex, a proprietary blend of turmeric and tamarind from ingredient supplier NXT USA, which has been clinically shown to improve joint comfort, flexibility and function in as little as five days.
“As the #1 selling pain relief brand in the U.S. with more than 60 years of experience, we are proud to use our heritage to offer science-backed, proactive options to improve joint health and further our mission to Care Without Limits,” said Jen Gow, head of U.S. Pain at Kenvue, Tylenol’s parent company. “This launch expands the Tylenol brand into the supplement space and provides consumers an offering to build a more complete toolkit for wellness.”
The Proactive Support launch will appear across TV, digital, social and retail media. Priced at $19.99 for a one-month supply, products will be available at major retailers including Amazon, Walmart and CVS alongside Tylenol in the pain aisle.
Creatine pioneer eyes Holy Grail for ingredient: Shelf-stable RTDs
The growth in creatine research and new health benefits is highlighting the need for new versions of creatine aligned with convenience and big box grocery, and new technology could soon see creatine explode into the RTD space.
“It’s a game changer,” Steve Jennings, co-founder and CEO of Jenerise, told NutraIngredients.
“We saw that ready-to-drink beverages containing creatine don’t exist.” And that is for very good reason: In liquid, creatine converts to creatinine.
“The biggest challenge, and there have been many companies that have tried to solve this, is developing a technology that enables creatine to remain stable for a 24-month period,” he said. “That’s the Holy Grail.”
Working with a nutrition biotech company, Jennings says they have discovered a technology that will lead them to this Promised Land. “We’re close.”
“We knew there had to be a solution somewhere, and it was gonna probably come from a non-obvious piece of innovation that could be reverse engineered to, maybe not to solve the problem, but to approach the problem through a fundamentally different lens, and that’s what’s happened,” he said.
Thai Union debuts tuna-derived marine collagen
The ingredients arm of Thai Union has launched its first marine collagen derived from tuna skin. Marketed as ThalaCol, the collagen comes from multiple sources, including tuna fishing areas around Thailand like the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Using tuna skin-derived collagen could serve as a factor of differentiation in a market saturated with bovine collagen and cheaper tilapia fish scale and skin-derived collagen, Jurriën Zandbergen, managing director at Thai Union Ingredients, told NutraIngredients.
“Almost no one else is doing marine collagen from tuna, which is why we saw this as an opportunity to launch the next generation marine collagen,” he said “There are a lot of collagen producers but because we have the full supply chain control, we are able to differentiate our tuna skin collagen from the others.”
The company has also invested US $30 million in building a factory dedicated to marine collagen processing at the Samut Sakhon region, within 5 km of Thai Union’s main tuna processing factory, which has an annual production capacity of 1,500 tonnes.
