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Indian market open to accept innovations in nutraceuticals: Dr Narayana
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Monday, 27 January, 2020, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
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Indian market is open to accept innovations in nutrition and nutraceuticals. There is an imminent shift to Ayurveda and herbal based solutions. People are willing to try new and meaningful offerings, according to Dr D B A Narayana, chief scientific officer, Ayurvidye Trust, Bengaluru.
Dr Narayana was speaking at the recently-held National Conference on Health and Wellness through Nutrition and Nutraceuticals at M S Ramaiah University. According to him, extensive meaningful offerings have come to the fore with the supportive regulations in place in India. “Investments in science and technology for Indian ingredients are seen with higher success rates in commercialisation. We are seeing accountability in innovations and this is the way forward,” he added.
The veteran expert was addressing the gathering on the Functionality of Plant Extractives for Nutraceuticals - Ancient Indian food science - source of today’s supplements and nutraceuticals. Dr Narayana spoke about the Indian food thaali, “Food we eat and the science behind it. The food continuum is huge with a long-term history of safe use.”
“Indian wisdom of food continuum is documented in traditional authoritative texts like the granthas and the first treatise being the Charaka Samhita dating back to 1500 BC. Following these, our regulations are devised with dedicated ‘Schedules’ that list quantities around 400 botanicals/herbs,” he said.
“The Ministry of Ayush did not want these botanicals/herbs to be listed as ASU ingredients nor give any reference to Ayush in the regulations. Instead these specific ingredients are referred in the regulations as ‘with long history of safe use.’ It has led to a Schedule categorised as speciality ingredients from ASU as supplements spanning from illness- to wellness-centric,” he added.
“What ensues is the resurgence of millets and multigrains. The market brims with beet and baked cookies with raisins, ragi. There are low calorie colas, juices and smart drinks, umpteen number of ‘healthy’ snacks. There are projects focussing to reduce unhealthy foods and increasing consumption of goodies. There are ‘no or low’ alcohol beer products,” said Dr Narayana.
“We also see sourcing nutrients / nutritionals to create an offering of different baskets to select healthy ingredients. These baskets include three categories. The first covers Nutrients: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, nucleotides. The second is Nutritionals of fractionated or purified compounds from nature like botanicals or animals or microbial source, apart from nutraceuticals, prebiotics, probiotics. The third basket has Nutritionals which are botanicals and their concentrates,” he noted.
However confusion prevails in the category of supplements and nutraceutical s and clarity is much wanted on the concentrated source of botanicals and other natural form supplements. But some nutraceuticals are also nutrients based on scientific data and studies. These cover spices and condiments, herbs with history of safe use and documented in traditional texts, non-herbal food items like milk and milk-based products besides marine shells, corals, algae, fish among others, according to Dr Narayana. “Indian market is open to accept innovations in nutrition and nutraceuticals,” he stated on a concluding note.
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