Healthy ageing: From living longer to living better

How nutrition can support health, vitality, and an active lifestyle throughout life

Healthy ageing is about more than adding years to life. The focus is increasingly shifting towards maintaining health, vitality, and independence at every stage of adulthood. For food, beverage, and nutrition manufacturers, this opens opportunities to develop products that deliver targeted nutritional support in convenient, enjoyable formats.

Healthy ageing cannot be reduced to a single benefit or ingredient. It connects multiple areas of well-being, including muscle and mobility, cognitive health, digestive well-being, and everyday energy and vitality. This multidimensional perspective makes healthy ageing a strong platform for functional food innovation.

A multidimensional approach to healthy ageing

Different nutritional building blocks can be combined according to the intended health benefit, permitted health claims, target consumer and application.

Muscle and mobility
Protein • Collagen • Vitamins and minerals

Cognitive health
Protein • Omega-3 fatty acids • Vitamins and minerals

Digestive well-being
Fibres • Microbiome-supporting ingredients • Natural bioactive compounds

Energy and vitality
Carbohydrates • Electrolytes • Antioxidants • Creatine • Botanical extracts

The opportunity lies in translating these nutritional solutions into convenient, appealing products that fit naturally into consumers’ everyday routines.

Muscle and mobility

Maintaining physical strength and mobility is an important part of healthy ageing. Sufficient high quality protein intake provides a strong nutritional foundation. Healthy older adults may need approximately 1.0–1.2 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, more than the standard guideline of 0.8 g/kg, to help maintain muscle mass and reduce the risk of age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia). For a person weighing 75 kg, this corresponds to approximately 75–90 g of protein per day. Barentz offers a broad portfolio of animal- and plant-based proteins, providing suitable solutions for a wide range of applications and positioning needs. Collagen and selected vitamins and minerals can broaden the formulation and positioning possibilities.

Dairy products, beverages, snacks, and bars can all offer accessible ways to incorporate targeted nutrition into familiar everyday formats. Our Post-Workout Chocolate Shake concept demonstrates how a high-protein formulation can be combined with selected vitamins and minerals in a convenient format designed to support post-exercise nutrition.

Cognitive health

Supporting cognitive health is another area for nutritional innovation. Depending on the intended positioning and formulation, ingredients such as DHA, choline, B vitamins, and selected minerals can be considered as part of a broader nutritional concept.

The Barentz Healthy Ageing Bites concept demonstrates this combination approach, bringing together a protein base, algal DHA, and a premix containing B vitamins, biotin, iodine, and magnesium.

Digestive well-being

Digestive well-being can also form part of a broader healthy ageing strategy. Fibre, prebiotic ingredients, probiotics, and postbiotics create opportunities to combine digestive-health positioning with everyday nutrition. Our portfolio includes specific pro- and postbiotic strains targeting gut health, for example clinically shown support for IBS symptoms improvement.

These ingredients can be applied across beverages, (fermented) dairy products, bakery products, and snacks. Our portfolio includes fibres such as FOS, GOS, psyllium fibre, inulin and maize fibre, all of which offer prebiotic functionality. Next to that, Barentz offers a range of insoluble fibres that could contribute to digestive health as well. Our Plant-based Fermented “Yogurt” Drink concept demonstrates how prebiotic fibre and probiotics can be incorporated into a refreshing creamy drink to support digestive well-being.

Energy and vitality

Maintaining energy and vitality can support an active lifestyle throughout adulthood. Carbohydrates and proteins provide a familiar nutritional foundation, while vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, creatine and selected botanical extracts can help create more targeted functional concepts.

These solutions can be incorporated into beverages, snacks, instant drinks, and other convenient nutritional formats designed for use throughout the day. Ingredient selection should reflect the intended positioning, target consumer, sensory profile, and applicable health claims.

Our Nutritious Bar concept is a convenient and appealing way to combine nutrients that support energy and vitality in one product. A targeted vitamin and mineral premix, together with other micronutrients and functional ingredients, may enable relevant authorised health claims, depending on the final formulation and applicable legislation.

Turning healthy ageing into product innovation

Healthy ageing offers a broad innovation platform across food, beverages, and nutrition. The opportunity is not simply to add functional ingredients, but to bring together the right nutritional solutions in the right application, with a format and experience that consumers will enjoy.

By combining ingredient knowledge, formulation expertise, and application development, Barentz Human Nutrition helps manufacturers translate healthy-ageing opportunities into relevant, appealing, and technically feasible product concepts.

Ready to explore your next healthy-ageing concept? Connect with Barentz Human Nutrition to discuss ingredients, formulation, and application possibilities via HN@barentz.com .