Cholesterol-lowering beer enters US market

guido · Site Admin Joined: Oct 18, 2004 Posts: 376 Location: Italy

03/01/2005 - A cholesterol-lowering beer developed in Sweden is being launched in the US, the first market for the novel product.

The beer, made by a patented process that results in a product rich in heart healthy beta-glucan fibres, was designed at Lund university and will be marketed across the Atlantic by Beverage Marketing USA.

Richard Davis, president of the company, said that emerging information on the potential health benefits and possible disease prevention qualities of the beverage along with the natural antioxidants already found in beer could help the product "become the next major nutraceutical beverage in promoting good cardiovascular health".

Clinical studies on the product are currently being carried out in Sweden.

The US Food and Drug Administration has for some years allowed a health claim on products rich in oat beta-glucans and their benefit on heart disease risk and the region's food market is known to be more liberal than many European ones.

In Europe however brewers have already fallen foul of advertising regulators for making reference to potential health benefits of their products, and marketing the product here is likely to be challenging.

In a recent interview with NutraIngredients.com, the project leader Arne Berge said: “We have to be very serious about this – we are claiming health benefits in a product that is not normally associated with health. We need to find partners who know their market and who have the guts to support the product.”

However he added: “We have tried to introduce a new way of looking at functional foods. Most functional foods demand that you change your way of living. And while people know more and more about what they have to do live a healthier lifestyle, this doesn’t seem to help.”.

Guido
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In vino veritas!

paulamathers · Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 2:34 pm Post subject:

does it taste any good?