At this year’s IFT First Annual Meeting and Expo in Chicago, PLT Health Solutions Inc., Morristown, N.J., will highlight its growing portfolio of beverage-friendly ingredients that provide a broad range of science-backed benefits for the burgeoning functional beverage market, it notes. 

Overall, PLT markets more than a dozen water-dispersible and water-soluble solutions, primarily botanical ingredients across key health categories. At IFT, PLT will focus on three major health and wellness segments: energy, active nutrition and stress/mood management. 

In the past eight months, PLT has launched three new water-soluble and dispersible ingredients: Zynamite S for mental energy, water-dispersible RipFACTOR for muscle strength and endurance and a water-soluble version of its adaptogen, Rhodiolife Rhodiola rosea. Each of these botanical complexes required significant R&D to meet the standards of the beverage industry.

Steve Fink, vice president of marketing at PLT Health Solutions, explains that consumers increasingly turning to more convenient delivery systems. As such, the company has been engaged in an across-the-board campaign to either create or modify its ingredients to make them formulation-friendly in new delivery systems. 

“For a variety of reasons, beverages present a range of challenges when it comes to consumer sensory and experience. This is especially true when it comes to plant-based and botanical ingredients” he said in a statement. “In approaching this development work, we’ve focused on things beverage producers want: uniform particle size and density, good water dispersibility/solubility, neutral taste and color and stability. At the same time, our beverage-friendly ingredients maintain features that every product developer wants they are fast-acting to the point of being experiential, they are low dose and maybe most importantly, they are backed by quality clinical science.”

For energy, PLT offers both stimulant and non-stim energy ingredients with its zumXR Targeted Release Caffeine and Zynamite – via the recently introduced Zynamite S format.

As part of its sports/active nutrition portfolio, beverage-friendly ingredients will include MegaNatual-BP grape seed extract for enhanced blood flow and endurance, RipFACTOR Muscle Accelerator with extensive clinical science demonstrating improved muscle strength and endurance and finally Slendacor Weight Management Complex, that offers non-stimulant calorie burning and weight loss. Both MegaNatural-BP and Slendacor also have clinically demonstrated cardiometabolic benefits.

For the stress/mood and cognitive health category, PLT will showcase Rhodiolife Rhodiola rosea that leads the adaptogen trend and Zembrin Sceletium  tortuosum, which has extensive clinical work showing reduced stress and enhanced mood in less than two hours from ingestion.

“When it comes to functional beverages, ubiquitous ingredients like protein, vitamins and minerals are a great starting point, but today’s consumers are looking for more impactful, and innovative health benefits. They want more functionality in their functional beverages,” Fink stated. “The clinical science behind these PLT ingredients and the front-of-pack messaging they can support will help consumer products companies create a great deal of excitement in the market.”

IFT First Annual Meeting and Expo will take place July 14-17 at McCormick Place in Chicago. PLT’s booth will be located at 4760.