Dark chocolate is a functional food and a superfood, due to its high content of flavanols, antioxidants and minerals such as magnesium, zinc, iron and copper.
Secondly, fortifying chocolate with active nutraceuticals creates a pleasurable and especially effective experience: the natural healthy fats in chocolate act as a carrier to improve the digestion and bioavailability of the other ingredients.
As such, The Functional Chocolate Company believes that chocolate is the perfect base to enhance with its unique nutraceutical formulas.
In addition, and perhaps most importantly, rich and tasty chocolate offers a pleasurable delivery of key ingredients, making it more likely that the supplement will be consumed regularly, which can be a challenge with less palatable pills, tinctures or capsules.
According to Fortune Business Insights, the global functional food and beverage market is projected to grow from $281.14 billion in 2021 to $529.66 billion in 2028, at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5 percent.
While these statistics represent a huge opportunity, they fail to capture the true breadth of opportunities that functional foods can address, says The Functional Chocolate Company.
According to the World Economic Forum, anxiety is currently the biggest mental health problem worldwide.
Similarly, sleep problems affect 80% of Americans, 73% of women are not addressing menopausal symptoms, and more than 55% of people have pain issues, all of which can be addressed through functional approaches.
Dark chocolate
Customers are increasingly looking for new ways to solve these common problems.
In the natural products industry, there is often talk of «pill fatigue»: consumers no longer want to stockpile pills, capsules and powders to meet their daily health needs.
In the current economic climate, consumers are increasingly looking for products that offer them the best value for their dollars and calories.
Combining ethically sourced chocolate with effective blends of nutraceuticals is just that.
What are functional foods and why are they so exciting?
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics explains functional foods as «whole foods along with fortified, enriched or enhanced foods that have a potentially beneficial effect on health when consumed as part of a varied diet on a regular basis at effective levels based on meaningful standards of evidence.»
It turns out that the term functional foods is quite broad and encompasses both foods that simply have a positive effect on health and «fortified foods» that include additional health-enhancing ingredients such as vitamins, minerals, probiotics or nutraceuticals.
Calcium-fortified orange juice is one of the «original» functional foods that many of us know and love.
Today, functional foods range from nootropics to potato chips to adaptogenic coffee and many other products in between.
