Beverages that blur category lines are leading drink product launches as consumers continue to expect more functionality from the products they buy. Botanical ingredients are a key focus for consumers fulfilling this expectation.

Kerry Hughes, MSc, principal for EthnoPharm shares five botanical ingredients food and beverage developers should be paying close attention to.

Botanical ingredients— especially herbs, spices, and rhizomes (ginger, turmeric, galangal) — can help play a big part in helping product developers create new foods and beverages that help the body protect itself against disease and dysfunction.

With the recent surge in attention to immunity, American consumers are now thinking of preventive health less in terms of reaching for “immune boosting” supplements and more about “immune resilience.” Incorporating botanicals into food products can aid significantly in maintaining the many and complex facets of immunity.

Watch or listen to a Prepared Foods interview with ethnobotanist and contributing editor Kerry Hughes discussing the trending foods, beverages, and ingredients using botanicals featured at 2024 Natural Products Expo West.

While natural and botanical methods of preservation have been in use for centuries, the modern food processing system has relied heavily on synthetic food preservatives, such as nitrates, benzoates, sulfites, sorbates, and others. 

As consumers rapidly switch to healthier alternatives and embrace prevention as a tool for living a better lifestyle, experts note that interest in botanicals and adaptogens is on the rise. 

As consumers continue to demand more than hydration from their beverages, manufacturers are turning to new ways to deliver on functionality and clean label preferences.

Laurie and Sarah Tennent are the rare mother and daughter who happily collaborate on projects. Their current one is an art exhibit that combines outstanding images of botanicals with informative details about their healing properties.

This document presents the outcomes of the 3rd OECD Biopesticide Seminar, held in 2011, that focused on the topic of “botanicals” (also known as plant extracts). The Seminar reviewed a number of scientific and regulatory issues related to the “characterisation and analyses of botanicals for the use in plant protection products”.

Organic botanicals make the difference with Bluecoat Gin. This American Dry Gin, distilled in Philadelphia, is the main ingredient in our food blogger’s Satur

Center For Food Safety

Bound by tradition but using honey from stingless bees and Australian botanicals proves to be more than just a silver lining for a NSW distiller.

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