Entrepreneur Pranevicius, who is CEO of the fast-growing beverage development company based in Lithuania, believes that functional beverages can help prevent, if not cure diseases.
“We’ve developed a portfolio functional beverage compounds to manufacturers. Our focus is lifestyle diseases – heart health, skin aging, cholesterol balance, stress, etc.” he tells BeverageDaily.com.
Functional drinks with digestion support are top of his list as a huge worldwide trend. “Due to unbalanced nutrition, fast-paced lifestyles and stress, there has never been such growth in numbers of digestion-related diseases,” he says.
Waging war on obesity
Weight management also holds massive potential, Pranevicius notes, with obesity one of the most common lifestyle diseases – 36.9%-56.7% of women suffer from obesity and 51%-69.3% of men, according to EUROSTAT figures.
“Our aim is to develop functional beverage compounds to decrease the amount of lifestyle diseases,” he says.
“Market analysis shows that products which are targeted to weight management is an emerging trend among consumers in Western Europe and Scandinavia.”
Turning to heart health, Pranevicius notes its attraction for consumers, given that CVD causes 4m+ deaths in Europe and 1.9m+ in the EU each year, while he also pinpoints skin aging as another area of concern that MyDrink is addressing.
Inactive lifestyles and poor nutrition
Energy remains big, Pranevicius says, but given media scare stories linking traditional energy drinks to heart problems, the thrust is towards healthier, natural alternatives that meet the demands of modern living.
Cholesterol balance, stress relief and immunity defense are three other interest areas for MyDrink Beverages and Pranevicius, who cites statistics on the last showing that 65% of Western people suffer from a weak immune system.
“Due to the inactive lifestyle and bad nutrition, people are damaging their health and weakening their immune system,” he says. “Products that solve this problem will gain their attention.”
Pranevicius also refers to his hot tips for 2013, where cholesterol, weight management and skin health also figures, alongside sleep improvement, tooth-friendly drinks, healthy energy drinks, drinks for seniors and Omega-3 based products.