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Patent filings directed to sports nutrition continue to generally grow year over year. The trend is particularly pronounced on a global scale. The increase in patent filings (through 2016) of sports nutrition products has been occurring outside the United States, with a large portion of filings in China. Brazil and Russia, which are not usually…
FDA investigators who inspect dietary supplement manufacturing facilities for compliance with cGMPs (current good manufacturing practices) are still often finding the same deficiencies more than a decade after the regulations were adopted. In fiscal year 2018 (FY18), 75 inspections—or about 24 percent of firms that received a Form 483 inspection report for “observations,” or alleged…
The international unit (IU) has been used to measure fat-soluble vitamins—vitamin A, D and E—for decades. The IU is an arbitrary amount based on the amount of a given nutrient needed to produce a biological effect. Different than milligram or microgram, the IU measurement describes something that we cannot see; the potency or biological activity…
Sleep aids are rapidly growing in popularity across the globe, posting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5 percent between 2012 and 2017 to reach retail sales of US$2.3 billion in 2017, according to market research firm Euromonitor International. Driven by an increasingly stressed and sleepless consumer base, particularly in the developed world, sleep…
Branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) are incredibly popular with hardcore athletes and body builders. BCAAs include leucine, isoleucine and valine, which are essential amino acids that humans only get from food and beverage because the body doesn’t make them on its own. Among the benefits of BCAA products are stimulation of muscle protein synthesis (MPS), prevention…
The gut flora performs a variety of functions that are important for health. In fact, 70 percent of the body’s immune cells are located in the digestive tract, making gut health critical to overall health. A healthy and well-balanced gut flora facilitates digestion, protects against pathogens, provides vitamins and nutrients, and helps form the immune…
Nitric oxide (NO) is a critically beneficial molecule for sports nutrition due to its role in cardiovascular function. Previously viewed as a noxious atmospheric gas, research in the 1980s began to illuminate the role NO plays as an important chemical messenger. Named “molecule of the year” in 1992 by the journal Science (1992;258(5090):1861), NO received…
The Trump Administration has approved the latest round of superimposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, including many dietary ingredients. The move places an immediate burden on the supply-side of the natural products industry, as companies scramble to figure out pricing and availability, while hoping for relief via an exclusion process. The effects,…
Qualifying and quantifying the market for products that address anxiety, stress, mood and sleep is a little like trying to nail jelly to the wall or define “obscenity.” Regarding the latter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously remarked in 1964 that “I know it when I see it” to describe his threshold test in Jacobellis…
Let’s face it: the world feels like it is changing faster and more aggressively than any other time in recent history. In the sports nutrition industry, iron-clad brands are now showing cracks in their armor. This is especially true for legacy sports nutrition brands. These brands are feeling the squeeze to stay relevant against an…