Vitamins, minerals and plant protein have emerged as superstar sports nutrition ingredients in new consumer research. Prinova, the leading provider of bespoke premixes and blends, surveyed 1277 physically active European consumers.

It presented them with a list of 20 common ingredients and asked them to pick the five that they most looked for in sports nutrition products.

By far the highest scoring ingredients were vitamins, picked by nearly two thirds (64 per cent) of consumers, followed by plant protein and minerals.

Meanwhile, many ingredients not traditionally associated with sports nutrition also scored highly.

Sixteen per cent of consumers looked for products containing fibre, shortly followed by omega-3 (14 per cent), botanicals (13 per cent), probiotics (9 per cent), and oats (9 per cent).

Tony Gay, Technical Sales Director, Nutrition, at Prinova Europe, said: “Not so long ago, sports nutrition was seen as synonymous with protein, but the landscape is already looking very different.

The market has exploded as scientific research has revealed the value of a far wider range of ingredients for athletic performance, and that has cut through to consumers.

For example, there’s growing awareness that a deficiency of B-vitamins can reduce athletes’ ability to perform high-intensity exercise, while Vitamin C offers benefits for recovery as well as immune health, and minerals can offer benefits in areas like hydration.”

More than four in ten (42 per cent) consumers named plant proteins as one of the ingredients they most looked for, compared to 26 per cent who looked for whey or dairy protein, 15 per cent who looked for egg protein and 8 per cent who looked for meat protein.