"Stay up the longest night and eat the most expensive maintenance products."
"Coffee with goji berries, you can get up early tomorrow."
Recently, the slogan of the young generation of "punk health" popular on the Internet has been put on the hot list by netizens with the change of summer and autumn. Staying up late, working overtime, takeaway and other irregular life schedules and high-intensity life rhythms are the most true portrayals of young people today. How to deal with the physical weakness caused by the current situation, the answer for young people is not to adjust their work and rest, but to find a way to "food supplement". On Xiaohongshu, there are more than 850,000 notes on healthy food supplements, and bottles and jars soaked with ginseng, chrysanthemum, red dates and other Chinese medicine ingredients have become the "life-saving water" of the young generation of food supplements.
The punk health care of the post-90s and post-00s generations has made the maintenance of Chinese ingredients a new trend, and the traditional Chinese concept of "medicine and food from the same source" has once again become "popular". Under the huge market demand of the younger generation of consumer groups, foods with the traditional "medicine and food from the same source" as the core concept have been continuously introduced to the market, and many new and old brands have developed and iterated Chinese herbal beverages, catering to market demand with simple, fresh appearance and scientific proportioned ingredients, setting off a new round of "Chinese food supplement trend".
New consumption focuses on post-90s health care
According to the "China Health and Wellness Big Data Report", the current mainland health and wellness market has exceeded one trillion yuan, with an average annual average of more than 1,000 yuan spent by each urban resident on health and wellness, of which 83.8% are young people aged 18 to 35. Huge social pressure, unable to escape 996, makes young people pay special attention to health care under the high-intensity life. A random survey shows that young consumers' expectations for beverages can only rank third in terms of unique taste, and the most important thing is that they have the characteristics of nutrition, refreshment, and eye-catching.
In the fast-paced lifestyle, more young people tend to buy instant products to meet the needs of efficient and nutritious diets. Small packaging, sports bottles, locked fresh cans, small fresh style, dazzling and beautiful design, simple and cold style, herbal drinks on the market based on the concept of "medicine and food from the same source", have a different appearance from the traditional Chinese products in the past, but more trendy, younger, and can even become a trendy prop in the hands of young people when they go to Internet celebrity attractions. At the same time, the selection of ingredients for these botanical and herbal drinks is also more basic, dandelion honeysuckle water, black bean barley tea, mulberry loquat drink... These herbal drinks with simple raw materials and reasonable formulas have had innate advantages since their launch with the blessing of traditional Chinese culture.
Professor Nie Hong of Jinan University said: "With the improvement of people's living standards, consumers pay more and more attention to health, and under the influence of the culture of medicine and food, the use of more convenient foods that young people like to hear has gradually become accessible. People's demands for drinks are no longer just to quench thirst, but more to focus on their underlying nutrition and adjusting the state of the body. Therefore, the herbal drink of 'medicine and food from the same source' has also become a demand for young people to supplement nutrition and pursue a healthy life according to the seasonal solar terms. As a result, the concept of 'medicinal and food homologous' has re-emerged, related applications have become more and more extensive, and consumers are more and more willing to pay for plant drinks with the same origin of medicine and food. ”
"Medicine and food from the same source" leverages contemporary science and technology
China has had the concept of "medicine and food from the same source" since ancient times, dating back to the Shennong era, which has been 4,000 years ago. After the development of medicinal and food culture, combined with the modern health industry, a new medicinal and food culture and form have been formed. "Medicinal and food" herbal drinks can give full play to the dual advantages of herbs and Chinese medicinal materials, such as some herbs have the functions of replenishing qi and moisturizing the lungs, evacuating wind and heat, etc., and integrating these ingredients into beverages has become a new trend.
However, the development of Chinese herbal beverages is still being explored, and many categories have also brought certain difficulties to consumers' choices.
"Material selection and craftsmanship are the right and left hands of the product."
Shanghe Company, which has been developing in the field of health for 30 years, is also about to launch a new Chinese herbal beverage this autumn, and Director Wei, head of corporate product development, said: "Products with the concept of 'medicine and food from the same source' are very important in the selection of herbs to ensure the safety and reliability of raw materials to the greatest extent." In terms of product selection, she described it as a "biomining" process, which went through 17,700 tests and built product development concepts through the introduction of various automation platforms. This plant herbal drink, called "Heqing", has undergone 7 extraction and biotransformation processes and 100 efficacy experimental platform evaluations in terms of production and preparation. Through modern separation and analysis technology and process purification and preparation, the walls of medicinal and food homologous herbs are broken, extracted, recombined and purified, and the absorption of nutrients from medicinal and food homologous herbs by the human body is promoted.
"Allowing traditional concepts to carry modern production technology is a new interpretation of the same culture of medicine and food, and it is also a precious wealth left to us by the traditional culture of the motherland." Director Wei said that Shanghe's innovative excavation of Chinese products is a new attempt, and it is also Shanghe's ingenuity to innovate products in the past 30 years.
Herbal drinks open in autumn
The plant-based herbal beverage was selected to be launched in early autumn, advocating the concept of traditional Chinese medicine and food, while also providing consumers with more seasonally specific products. "Heqi Qing" brings together 7 kinds of medicinal and food homologous plants, including mulberry leaf liquid, galangal juice, peppermint liquid, perilla powder, bellflower powder, houttuynia powder, chrysanthemum powder, etc., which are gentle and moisturizing, clear heat and dryness, and fight "autumn dryness".
In this regard, Director Wei of Shanghe Company introduced that the temperature is suddenly cold in autumn, and the respiratory tract will also bear greater pressure, and the human body is particularly sensitive to "autumn dryness". Some common autumn dryness manifestations include dry mouth, dry skin, etc., taking perilla in the product ingredients as an example, it is a good ingredient for clearing heat and moisturizing, houttuynia, peppermint clear heat and detoxify, fresh and pleasant, and the heat of galangal plays a harmonizing role, better warming the spleen and stomach in the cool autumn season. The taste of "Heqing" returns to the refreshing purity of Chinese drinks, with a faint herbal taste and a rich backlash, because the formula eliminates the use of sucrose, coloring, and preservatives, and also subverts the public's previous impression of "sweet drinks".
In this regard, Fan Zhihong, a professor at the College of Food of China Agricultural University and chief expert of science communication of the China Association for Science and Technology, said: "No one stipulates that drinks must be sweet, and the mainland has mainly used tea and boiled water as drinks since ancient times, and there is no habit of drinking sweet drinks." However, since the 90s of last century, due to a large number of advertising investment in sweet beverage products, the people have formed a mindset of 'drinks must be sweet'. The 2020 National Nutrition and Chronic Disease Survey found that the proportion of children and adolescents drinking sweet drinks continued to rise, and the regular drinking rate of sugary drinks in 12~17-year-old adolescents was 26%, and the bad habit of drinking sweet drinks not only promoted the occurrence of dental caries, but also increased the risk of obesity, diabetes and hyperuricemia. Fan Zhihong said that the mainland has a long history of drinking unsweetened beverages, and there are countless "tea substitute" recipes suitable for various human groups, which are worth developing and using, these drinks can allow consumers to get closer to the taste of natural plants and trees, increase the intake of potassium and antioxidants, and meet the demand for hydration and thirst. At the same time, if some young consumers who are originally sweet can gradually get rid of their dependence on sweetened drinks, it will be an additional social benefit. ”
With the addition of more and more new Chinese health brands, plant and herbal beverages under the big health industry have also entered a new period of "hundred schools of thought", product innovation has bloomed new vitality, brought many "new species" to the market, and driven the growth of category voice and sales, providing consumers with more and more choices.