Nutraceutical Discoveries Inc.
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By Carly Harrington Michael Zemel says he wants to be the country's "inefficiency expert." The University of Tennessee professor and director of The Nutrition Institute has invented Innutria, an all-natural ingredient that Zemel said will help make people "less efficient" at storing fat while giving a boost to metabolic and cardiovascular health. "It's true we can do that by eating a really good diet all the time, but we're creating an alternative for the 90-plus percent of individuals who don't do that. The market, of course, is huge," said Zemel, who first discovered the link between dietary calcium and weight control in the 1980s. Zemel has teamed up with Curtis Jones, who co-founded the software company NetLearning Inc., to market the ingredient and future products to food and beverage companies through Nutraceutical Discoveries Inc., a licensee of the UT Research Foundation. In August, NDI announced it had signed its first partnership with Attitude Drinks, a brand development company that plans to launch a new dairy drink in spring 2009. "This is not going to be a one-hit wonder," Zemel said. "We're not going to sit with this one ingredient." Zemel expects to develop a family of Innutria products aimed at different markets like men's and women's health, weight loss and active living. The business is targeting such beverages as water and teas as well as foods like oatmeal and beans. NDI is currently in talks with an international food, beverage and supplement company. "It's unlikely you'll see it in sizzling bacon or potato chips," Zemel said. "We want to put it in better-for-you foods. We want our powered by Innutria label to mean something. There's no shortage of outlandish claims about what foods and supplements can do for you. You won't see those coming from NDI." After developing the technology that resulted in a license for the "got milk?" campaign for the dairy industry, Zemel said he realized he could replicate the concept through science in other foods. While he was approached by other companies asking him to create something similar for them, Zemel said he decided it would be "more interesting, more valuable and more fun to do it for ourselves instead." "What differentiates us is our claims are validated in highly regarded medical journals and they provide a competitive advantage to our customers," Jones said. "We're not magic, but we can help leverage a person's (healthy lifestyle) efforts to make it much more effective." |
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