The supplement industry is booming. Some of the hottest products this year include nutricosmetics that target menopause, gut health and promote all kinds of other beauty benefits.
Here, Senior Associate and commercial lawyer Bernadett Nagy explores changing beauty standards and identifies the top trends to watch before offering a word of warning to brand owners, marketing managers and influencers looking to promote the benefits of such products through advertising.
Holistic wellness
The meaning and concept of beauty is constantly evolving. Once understood as someone’s appearance and how that complied with society’s beauty standards at the time, nowadays beauty takes on a more holistic (and less critical) view.
Today’s concept of beauty is complex. It can embody skin health, healthy eating, gut health, mental health and conscious living. With holistic wellness in mind, beauty brands are keen to offer a better and wider range of food supplements that intend to complement their traditional topical product offerings. Consumers are looking for supplements that — through regular consumption — can promote faster growing or shinier-looking hair, glowing or tighter-looking skin and more.
Beauty from within
Nutricosmetics — also referred to as ‘ingestible beauty’ or ‘beauty from within’ — are a relatively new concept. Products targeting hair, nail and skin health have been available on the market for a while now, in several forms such as multivitamin tablets or powders.
While the consumption of supplements containing ingredients like collagen, zinc, vitamin C and vitamin A is commonly associated with beneficial effects, the body-mind-health concept is now going further with the aim of providing solutions for more complex concerns that affect our everyday wellness.
2024’s hottest supplement trends
These include:
- Perimenopause and menopause — these are quickly thriving among women who start experiencing negative symptoms as a result of their hormonal changes. These can make everyday life more difficult, affecting sleep, mood, fatigue, anxiety and causing hot flushes. A range of supplements are already available that claim to relieve these symptoms, which could quickly become a staple of many women’s diets.
- Gut health — the concept of a healthy microbiome has received a lot of attention lately. Consumers looking to resolve skin issues like psoriasis, eczema and acne aren’t solely looking for topical solutions. More commonly, they attempt to find a more holistic solution with the aid of a nutritious, healthy diet and specifically formulated supplements.
- Skin health — it now seems to be more widely understood that skin health starts with appropriate protection against damaging UV-A and UV-B sunrays. Instead of achieving a visible tan, what many of our bodies really need is the opposite. While topical SPF protection is commonly used, there seems to be a link between the consumption of certain supplements and our skin’s resilience against damaging sunrays such as beta-carotene, astaxanthin, vitamin D3, vitamin C, Omega 3 and krill oil — whether consumed on their own or in combination with other ingredients — which has led to the concept of ‘SPF supplements’.
- Ready-to-go beauty drinks and on-the-go beauty snacks — packed with such classics as collagen, hyaluronic acid and vegan protein, such products also seem to be on the rise. However, nutrition experts promoting the digestive benefits of fasting may argue over how beneficial snacking is. Nevertheless, there is a wide range of drinks and snacks marketed with ingredients that are believed to support our beauty and wellbeing.
Classifications are key
Although science and research have started to put more emphasis on the efficacy of these beauty supplements, we mustn’t forget that they’re classed as food supplements — not cosmetic products.
This means that in England, such products are subject to The Food Supplements (England) Regulations 2003. One of the implications is that only claims that have been authorised and listed on the Great Britain nutrition and health claims (NHC) register are permissible on labels and advertising materials.
Whether you’re a brand owner, marketing manager or influencer, if you’re looking to advertise an ingestible product with beauty benefits, you should ensure that you’ve classified your product correctly and don’t fall foul by virtue of the product’s ‘beauty’ aspect.
Some key issues to note include:
- Vitamin A — providing that certain conditions are met, it may be stated that vitamin A contributes to the maintenance of normal skin or the normal function of the immune system. These are scientifically-proven claims, authorised for use in Great Britain. However, there are no approved claims that would indicate any link to tanning or sun protection. Any advertising suggesting such effects would likely be seen as non-compliant.
- Collagen — supplements formulated with collagen as an ingredient are commonly associated with tighter skin and elasticity. However, claims like collagen ‘helps the skin to preserve its firmness and elasticity’ and ‘has a beneficial effect in the maintenance of skin firmness and elasticity’ have been rejected, as the scientific evidence didn’t link collagen to a function of the body, which is required by the Regulation on Nutrition and Health Claims Made on Foods. The consequence of this is that if collagen is advertised with its beneficial effects on skin, it will likely to be considered non-compliant and misleading.
- Vitamin C — contrary to the above, vitamin C does have a proven efficacy to contribute to collagen formation. Providing that further conditions are met, it may be claimed that ‘Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin’.
Unsure how your product is classified?
If you’re unsure about how your product should be classified, what you can say about their benefits when advertising or how to make compliant claims that aren’t misleading, talk to our expert beauty and fashion team by completing our contact form below.
