LONDON – These days, it pays to be beautiful — or least to claim to enhance beauty — when it comes to food and beverages, Marketing Daily reports. The so-called “beauty foods” product launch growth rate worldwide continues its upward climb.
The number of U.S. new food and beverage products claiming “beauty enhancing” has slowed because of the recession, but globally, such products have soared 306 percent between 2005 and 2008, according to Mintel’s Global New Products Database. Overall, food and beverage launches increased 35 percent during the same time period.
America had the most launches, with the United States producing 10 percent of the 169 worldwide debuts in 2007 and 20 percent of the 299 global introductions in 2008. Thus far this year, the global launch number has already reached 299, which was the entire year’s worth of new products in this category last year.
In the United States, 13 beauty-enhancing beverage and food products have been introduced, with indications pointing to healthy growth here as well, especially with the economy expected to recover soon.
The interest for these products is growing, too. For example, Mintel senior beauty analyst Taya Tomasello said that one in five U.S. women between the ages of 18 and 25 would try beauty functional beverages.
Across the world, recent beauty food products include dried fruit snacks dipped in collagen and a tea that claims to give the drinker great skin by “revitalizing each cell of the body within.”