With the global population ageing and the number of over-50s consumers continuing to grow, demand for nutritional solutions that support healthy ageing is accelerating. This award celebrates the most innovative ingredients designed to extend healthspan — the years lived in good health — by addressing the biological and functional challenges associated with ageing.

From cutting-edge ingredients targeting cellular health, including mitochondrial function, cellular senescence and oxidative stress, to solutions supporting inflammaging, metabolic resilience, muscle preservation, cognitive function and gut microbiome balance, this category recognises science-backed ingredients with demonstrated safety, a clear mechanism of action and relevance to growing consumer demand for proactive, personalised and preventive approaches to ageing.

This award honours ingredients that empower consumers to maintain physical and mental vitality, supporting longer, healthier and more active lives.

Our Judges looked at how your ingredient meets specific needs and based their scores on the evidence to demonstrate:

• A genuine consumer demand or requirement based upon a common issue or risk factor
• Solid scientific evidence to demonstrate a unique nutritional solution to this need or problem – including peer reviewed data to back up any performance or health claims made
• Commercial success and engagement from your core target market(s). Give numbers and examples of sales and applications that are available in the market
• What gives your ingredient the ‘X factor’ – something that makes it stand out from the crowd and edge out the competition (including evidence to back up claims)

To view the entry questions for this category, click to download

REQUIREMENT: Entries for the NutraIngredients Europe Awards, Ingredient of the Year categories were required to have the ingredient in a finished product that is commercially available in Europe.