Healthier Choices: Bright functional drinks for kids, trending Korea enzyme sticks, low-sodium soy sauce alternative and more in our round-up

Drink your biotics: Bright colours and visual appeal crucial to deliver healthier beverages to children – Tummy Buddies​

Australia’s Tummy Buddies believes that healthier product innovation for children needs to focus on bright colours and visual appeal in order to secure that crucial first purchase.

Tummy Buddies specialises in the creation of healthy synbiotic-enriched flavoured waters for children, and although the firm has put a lot of research and investment into the health benefits of these beverages, it believes that visual appeal is key to bringing in their target consumer.

“We actually nailed the flavours quite quickly, but we knew that the key or the important part of what we wanted to offer was the packaging and the look of the product was really, really crucial to us,”​ Tummy Buddies Co-Founder Rita Sellars told FoodNavigator-Asia ​in the most recent edition of our FNA Trailblazers podcast.

Powder power: South Korean women’s wellness and beauty specialist NGT eyes Asian expansion with Active Enzyme sticks​

South Korea’s Natural Good Things (NGT) is eyeing an expansion across Asia with its Active Enzyme sticks after successfully making a name for itself in the domestic women’s beauty and wellness market.

NGT is well known on South Korean social media due to intense investments into working with local KOLs such as 154kg who promote and sell its products, and also lays claim to the top spot in the Korean Satisfaction Consumer Index for six consecutive years from 2019 to 2024.

According to NGT CEO Kim Soo An, the firm has made its mark in the local market and most young women consumers are already familiar with it, so the time is right for it to focus its efforts on expanding into more overseas markets.

Coconut creations: Sokfarm taps rising sodium reduction trends and production advantages for new soy sauce alternative​

Vietnam-based Sokfarm believes that the rising demand for reduced sodium consumption as well as its natural coconut nectar production advantages have laid a strong foundation for the sales of its new aminos soy sauce alternative.

Sokfarm specialises in using coconut blossom sap to make a variety of unique products from coconut flower juice to coconut nectar, sweeteners and vinegar, but its latest endeavour has been the development of a new alternative to soy sauce dubbed aminos.

“We have a good footing in the beverage and sweetener markets, but realised that there is also a very big market to tap in the savoury space where soy sauce is one of the most-used condiments,”​ Sokfarm CEO Dinh Ngai Pham told FoodNavigator-Asia.​

Enhancing enjoyment: Hanamaruki looks to tap sodium reduction and affordability demands in ASEAN with new koji powder​

Japan-based Hanamaruki believes that its newly launched flavour-enhancing koji powder is in a prime position to cater to product innovation in South East Asia that fulfils both sodium reduction and affordability requirements.

Hanamaruki is best known for having developed the world’s first liquid shio koji product​, and only recently made strides to enter the South East Asian market after having seen significant success in East Asia and the west.

The firm has now developed a new koji powder with a focus on flavour enhancement, believing that this can cater to major innovation requirements in ASEAN.

“This koji powder can of course enhance the umami flavour as that is its own flavour at its essence, but it can also enhance many currently trending flavours such spice, cheese, chocolate and more,”​ Hanamaruki Overseas Business Department Assistant Chief Sales Representative Morise Maehara told FoodNavigator-Asia.​

Fermented gold kiwi intake shown to reduce self-reported gut discomfort – Eight-week RCT​

The supplementation of fermented gold kiwi has been shown to reduce the severity of self-reported gut discomfort, including abdominal pain and heartburn, according to an eight-week trial conducted in South Korea.

Fermented gold kiwi also significantly improved the self-reported quality of life of the intervention group as compared to the placebo group.

Writing in Nutrients​, ​the researchers of Semyung University, retail firm RnBS Corporation, and functional ingredient supplier Vitech which also provided the study materials, detailed how the study was conducted on individuals with dyspeptic symptoms, including post-meal fullness, epigastric pain, and epigastric burning.

By the end of the trial, both the intervention and placebo group showed significant decrease in their GSRS from the baseline.