Health supplements will come in form of food? What do we mean? To understand the health supplements industry, we must first understand health supplements. What are Health supplements?
The health supplements we often talk about refer to healthy foods. For example, traditional: ginseng, donkey-hide gelatin, bird’s nest, Ganoderma lucidum, cordyceps, and so on. For example, modern ones: nattokinase, fish oil, calcium tablets, melatonin, protein powder, vitamin tablets, and so on. Modern health supplements are in the form of medicines, capsules, tablets, and powders. Emphasize that it has been scientifically tested.
Is it really useful to eat health supplements?
When it comes to health supplements, one question cannot be avoided: Is it really useful to eat health supplements?
Tell you a story. From the 15th century to the 17th century, European fleets appeared on the oceans around the world, discovered new continents, and expanded new trade. Columbus, Da Gama, and Magellan were all born in this great era: the era of great navigation. However, this great era was accompanied by the curse of the sea god Poseidon.
A strange disease spread among the crew. The crewmembers who contracted this disease initially became weak, lethargic, and aches all over the body, and then became more and more uncomfortable, and died slowly, or died suddenly due to a fragile blood vessel burst. People are helpless with this disease.
Throughout the era of great navigation, it is estimated that 2 million seafarers have died from this strange disease. Even the famous navigator Da Gama, when his fleet returned to Portugal, only one-third of the crew remained, and most of the rest died of the disease. Today we know that this is: scurvy.
But at that time, it was not until hundreds of years later that people realized that the root cause of scurvy was the lack of an indispensable nutrient in the body of the crew: vitamin C.
However, vitamin C is usually only found in plant foods, such as kiwi, bitter melon, citrus, tomatoes, strawberries, lychees, and green leaves. It is basically not contained in animal foods, and the human body cannot synthesize it by itself. Therefore, in order to take in enough vitamin C, people must often eat fresh fruits and vegetables.
Eat fruits and vegetables often, which may not be a big problem for ordinary people. But for the crew who wanders at sea all year round, it is too difficult. Therefore, a large number of crew members were severely deficient in vitamin C and eventually developed scurvy.
This is the first time that mankind has truly realized that “unbalanced nutrition” can bring such serious consequences.
If you know the reason, it will be easier. Subsequently, the fleet began to be equipped with “lemon juice.” The curse of Poseidon was completely broken.
Then, with the continuous development of science, people realized that the so-called nutrition refers to the balanced intake of these five substances: “carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, and vitamins.”
However, because of various special reasons (going to the sea, partial eclipse, dietary culture), people’s intake of nutrients is unbalanced. What should I do? Then add it in a targeted manner. This is what we are talking about today: health supplements.
In the United States, the scientific name of health supplements is called dietary supplements (VMS, Vitamins, Minerals, & Supplements).
Back to the first question. Is it useful to eat health supplements? It works!
Eating health care products in a targeted way can achieve balanced nutrition. And balanced nutrition brings good health.
Mental accounting
We will put money into different categories in different mental accounts. For example, accounts necessary for living expenses account for family construction and personal development, accounts for emotional maintenance, accounts for pleasure and leisure, and so on.
Although these accounts are all under one large account, in fact, each sub-account exists independently.
Your customer is not really stingy, but your product is not in the mental account that he is willing to pay for.
The mental account of “dietary supplement” is an account with little money. In the United States, a bottle of vitamin C costs a few dollars. A bottle of melatonin is also a few dollars. Most health supplements cost a few dollars. Dietary supplements are hard to sell expensive. Because after all, the meal itself is not expensive.
No. I do not care. I just want to sell health supplements expensive. What do you propose?
Then you can only move health care products from the mental account of “dietary supplements” to those accounts with a lot of money.
Like what Chinese people do, they put it into a “gift” account. So that they can sell it at a very expensive price. However, now everyone has become more and more aware of the actual cost of health care products. It’s not as good as before to attack the mental account of “gifts” with excessive packaging and saturated publicity. Are there other valuable “mental accounts”?
Yes. Medicine.
Countless health care products companies are thinking about how to move health care products from “food” to “medicine”. But after all, it is not a good way to promote the products, and to be honest, in some countries, that’s even an illegal way.
Health supplements will come in form of food
In 2020, CBNData released a report “Insights into the consumption patterns of online health products for Chinese young people in 2020“. This report shows that young people born in the 1990s are becoming a new force in purchasing health care products.
They buy health products, which are fundamentally different from the elderly. The money they buy health products does not come from the mental accounts of “medicine”, but from “food.” That’s why we say Health supplements will come in form of food.
For example, now young people supplement vitamin C, instead of buying a bottle of pills, but buying orange-flavored “multi-dimensional jelly”.
You are not taking “medicine”. You are eating jelly, you are eating jelly. By the way, the “dietary supplement” was completed.
Post-85s, post-90s, and post-95s’ acceptance of “snacks” health products have grown by leaps and bounds. Soft candy and jelly have become the fastest growing form of health care products on Tmall.
Because their education tells them: health products are just dietary supplements.
If the younger generation becomes more and more like this, the health care product industry must have a future. And it has a bright future.
Health supplements will come in form of food. We also develop food forms of nattokinase like protein shake, cereal, yogurt, and wafer biscuit. If you have any interest in these kinds of nattokinase products, welcome to contact us!