Global Trends in Vitamin D Fortified Food Product Launches

The challenge of meeting nutritional requirements for vitamin D because of low supply in the food system means that substantial proportions of the population have low vitamin D intakes and status (1) . Naturally rich sources such as oily fish are consumed infrequently and foods such as eggs do not have sufficient quantities to meet Dietary Reference Values. Usually, fortification is voluntary and a premium price can be achieved for the fortified product. Hence, there may be a role for mandatory fortification to ensure equal access to healthy, fortified foods for all. The aim of this study was to profile food product launches to the global market over the last 15 years to determine if product launches can potentially meet Vitamin D requirement. The GlobalData (2) is an industry specific intelligence planform that can be accessed to identify and analyse food product launches based on specific inputs such food-type, country, nutrients, health claim etc. This database was mined to retrieve and analyse all food products launched in the 15year period from January 2009 to March 2024 with at least 0.01ug of vitamin D listed in the nutritional content. The search returned a database with a total of 2,203 products launches. From 2009, there was a steady increase in product launches until it peaked in 2012 with 320 products. Thereafter it decreased with a low in 2016 at 50 product launches. Although not exceeding the high in 2012, there has been a steady increase since 2016 with 150 launches reported for 2023. The top three countries for product launches were USA at 11.8% (n = 261) followed by UK at 7.2% (n = 159) and India at 6.6% (n = 146). The market is dominated by dairy foods with nearly half of all launches this category (47%). This was followed by drinks (15%), bakery and cereals (15%) and baby foods (10%). Countries such as the USA and India have voluntary fortification strategies in place which may explain higher proportion of product launches seen in these countries (3,4) . The implementation of a national vitamin D food fortification strategy may help to increase the launch/supply of fortified foods on the market to increase the potential to achieve recommended intakes. The dominance of vitamin D fortification within a small number of food categories such as dairy (5) highlights the opportunities and untapped potential for other food categories such as pasta and sauces to also undertake fortification. It is also important to accommodate the diversity of the diet and provide vitamin D fortified foods for non dairy consumers. Studies have shown that food fortification can increase vitamin D status (6) Therefore additional and more diverse food fortification should be considered to improve vitamin D intakes in the population.