Do you have questions about whether any vitamins, minerals, herbs, or other dietary supplement ingredients are useful during COVID-19? Have you wondered if supplements can boost immunity, reduce disease severity, or speed recovery? If someone is getting sufficient amounts of essential nutrients, does getting more help?

The Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) has published a new fact sheet for health professionals, Dietary Supplements in the Time of COVID-19, that answers these questions and more. It summarizes the state of the science on the safety and effectiveness of 11 dietary supplement ingredients from andrographis to zinc and...

In Europe, the plant-based alternative market is predicted to reach €7.5 billion by 2025, from €4.4 billion in 2019, and in the US, sales of plant-based foods have grown 29% in the past two years to reach $5 billion. With this level of popularity of plant-based foods, the opportunities for F&B manufacturers are endless. Plant-based products have exploded in popularity in recent years. In the US, sales of plant-based food and drink are outpacing overall food growth fivefold and SPINS retail data from March 2020 shows that grocery sales of plant-based foods that directly replace...

Lumina’s research on searches about probiotics online reveals a most surprising insight: immunity is no longer the area most researched by consumers online. In fact, search volumes pertaining to this term in a microbiome context fell by 31% between May 2020 and May 2021. Instead, the focus has turned to if and how pre- and probiotics might help in tackling stress-related issues amplified by the pandemic, like anxiety, IBS and weight problems. In this article, we look at the impact of this shift on probiotic market trends and discuss what consumers are actually looking for in their searches...

If we ignore the problems and needs of rural people in the world’s poorest countries, our attempts to create more equitable and sustainable food systems are doomed to failure, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said on the eve of the United Nations pre-Vertex on food systems opening in Rome on Monday. “Rural people have long been relegated to the margins of value food chains. In the face of the hard work with which they produce much of our food, they too often receive derisory compensation and are left vulnerable in the face of crises,” said Gilbert F. Houngbo, president of IFAD, the United Nations’ lead agency in the fight against rural poverty and hunger. “It is imperative at this time to correct the inequity of our food systems. Without decisive action that generates concrete changes for farmers...