What is the future of the powder application world? Here's an in-depth dive into Jason Braithwaite's interview on innovation in powder applications.
Watch his full interview
Almost every consumer has had the experience of trying a “healthy” drink and making a face. Jason Braithwaite is one of the people whose job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“I get to taste a lot of gross things and make sure you don’t have to taste it.”
— Jason Braithwaite, Applications Lab Manager
Building a great functional beverage, RTM, or meal replacement shake is harder than it looks. We interviewed Jason Braithwaite on flavor powders, bitter blockers, and the maskers that make the difference.
The biggest challenge in functional product development today is not a specific ingredient or process. It is economics. Brands are operating in a category where consumer expectations for taste have risen sharply, where ingredient costs are volatile, and where the gap between a product that performs well in a sensory panel and a product that performs well on a shelf often comes down to a few cents per serving.
What makes this challenge particularly difficult in the functional category is the nature of the ingredients themselves. Many of the actives that drive a product’s benefits, including botanicals, fermented proteins, nootropics, and novel adaptogens, carry strong off-notes by default. Bitterness, astringency, earthiness, and unfamiliar aromatic profiles are the rule rather than the exception. Formulating around them requires both a deep understanding of how those notes interact with flavor systems and the technical tools to redirect or suppress them.
“You could have the best, most healthy product that can work wonders for you, but if it doesn’t taste good, you’re not going to sell any of it.”
Every solution to a flavoring problem carries a cost, and the more aggressive the masking strategy, the more it tends to add to a product’s price. A pristine formula that comes in over budget is, for most brands, no formula at all.
“The terrible trade-off of the flavor industry. You can make something taste as good as you want, but if the price isn’t right, then it doesn’t matter.”
The work, then, is not simply to mask bitterness or amplify sweetness. It is to do so at a price point that allows the product to reach a shelf. A successful formulation in this category is rarely a perfect formula in isolation; it is the strongest formula that fits a brand’s cost structure, regulatory requirements, and target consumer.
Flavoring functional actives is a layered technical problem. Bitter, astringent, and earthy ingredients each require different masking approaches, often combined within a single formula, and the work involves more than pairing those actives with strong flavors. Sensapure’s flavor library includes a range of solutions developed in-house, alongside the chemists who continue to build new tools as new problems arrive on the bench.
Among the most frequently used are combined bitter blockers and sweetness enhancers, which suppress bitterness while increasing perceived sweetness from the same baseline formula. The advantage is twofold: the finished product reads as more palatable, and the formulator can often reduce overall sweetener load, which matters when a brand is working within sweetener restrictions or pursuing a specific label claim.
Botanicals present a different challenge. Their off-notes tend to be more complex than simple bitterness, often involving overlapping vegetal, medicinal, and earthy characteristics. One of Sensapure’s flavor chemists, Scott Zimmermann, recently developed a new blocker engineered specifically for this category, with strong early performance against the kinds of undesirable notes that have historically been the hardest to fully suppress.
“Our flavor chemist developed it a couple weeks ago. I’ve seen it do wonders with botanicals, blocking a lot of bitterness, undesirable notes.”
Astringency, the dry or puckering sensation produced by certain proteins and polyphenol-rich botanicals, requires its own dedicated tool. An astringency masker reduces that drying mouthfeel without flattening the rest of the flavor profile, which is essential in products where the brand wants both a clean finish and a full-bodied taste experience.
Plant proteins introduce another layer of difficulty. Pea protein in particular is known for gritty, earthy notes that resist standard masking approaches. Sensapure’s pea protein masker is built to suppress those characteristics directly, leaving a cleaner finish than standard flavor systems can achieve on their own.
“[Our pea protein masker] does a wonderful job masking those notes, and in some cases can add a very nice cereal note to the product.”
Not every solution requires a specialty ingredient. Some of the most cost-effective levers in functional flavoring remain the simplest.
“Sweetness works, and then salt is also a fantastic one as well for looking for more budget-friendly ways to block or mask off notes.”
Consumer demand in the functional beverage category is moving faster than it has in years, and the pressure of those shifts lands squarely on the formulators building the next generation of products. Five demand patterns are doing most of the reshaping right now. Each carries its own flavoring implications.
The hydration category expanded because one or two large brands proved a clear model: technology built around a real consumer need, marketing that named that need precisely, and flavors people actually wanted to drink. What followed has been a widening of what the category can include.
“Not only have they just stayed with the one work to hydrate you, they went from sugar-free to hydration with different benefits.”
Hydration+ formulations now layer in additional functions, including:
And the data backs the trend. Among U.S. consumers who report exercising more, sports drinks for hydration are the top product purchased to support exercise, climbing from 46% in 2019 to 74% in 2025. High-protein ready-to-drink beverages (52%) and energy drinks (50%) follow closely behind, suggesting the active consumer is reaching across multiple functional categories at once.1
Format matters as much as function. Single-serve powder packets give consumers control over intensity in a way ready-to-drink products structurally cannot. A consumer who wants a higher flavor impact can dose accordingly; a consumer who wants something subtle can dose down. That control is part of why powdered hydration has continued to grow even as ready-to-drink hydration has matured into a category of its own.
GLP-1 medications, including semaglutide, slow digestion and substantially reduce appetite. The clinical effect is intentional, but the downstream nutritional effect is creating a new formulation opportunity.
“People are losing a lot of weight, which means they’re also not eating as much. Adding in sources of protein, fiber, and vitamins will be a fantastic way to do that within a quick, easy shake.”
The variety of protein options currently available makes this opportunity easier to act on. Whey concentrates, whey isolates, plant proteins, fermented proteins, and clear protein systems for both whey and plant applications are all commercially available, each with its own flavor profile and masking requirements.
The shift is already visible in consumer behavior. Among U.S. consumers using or planning to use GLP-1 medications, 78% report using meal replacement shakes more frequently since starting the drug, with weight management bars (52%) and protein powders for shakes (38%) close behind.2 The active GLP-1 consumer is reaching for dense, drinkable nutrition. Functional beverages are exactly the category built to serve it.
The growth of the meal replacement category is driven primarily by convenience. The products are quick, portable, often less expensive than the meals they replace, and they let consumers control their nutrition with a level of precision that traditional eating does not allow. Single-serve formats are pulling steadily ahead of bulk tubs, for the same reason single-serve hydration overtook bulk powders: ease of use, portability, and the ability to try a product without committing to a large purchase.
Gen Z is drinking less alcohol, and the shift has been substantial enough that mocktails have grown into a category in their own right rather than a sidebar to traditional cocktails.
“They can look like a cocktail. They can look like a canned seltzer, but they are essentially their own.”
The function of mocktails is primarily social rather than physiological. Consumers who choose not to drink, or who choose to drink less, still want a product that fits the moment and the setting. Mocktails meet that need without leaning on physiological function claims, which is part of what makes the category distinct from other functional beverages.
Of all the trends shaping functional formulation, the one named most directly as underserved is fiber. American diets remain below recommended fiber intake, and the gap has not yet been closed by the existing supplement and functional beverage market. Asked where the clearest white space sits, the answer is straightforward:
“I would love to see products that are like, ‘we have protein, we have fiber.’ That is kind of a big miss in the industry right now.”
For brands looking for category whitespace, fiber-forward formulation is one of the more concrete opportunities currently visible.
Clean label demand is one of the most durable shifts in functional formulation, and one of the more difficult to deliver against. Consumers continue to gravitate toward products with shorter ingredient decks, recognizable sourcing, and transparent labeling, even as the technical realities of making those products taste good have grown more complex.
The pull is consistent but layered. Among U.S. sports nutrition buyers, 60% rate clean label as important when choosing products, but it sits alongside price (87%), scientific claims (81%), and multiple functional benefits (73%) as part of a broader decision matrix.3 Clean label is rarely the deciding factor on its own. It is one of several that a successful product has to satisfy at once. Solving for taste, price, and clean label simultaneously is exactly the trade-off Jason and his team work through every day.
The sweetener landscape is the most visible example. Stevia gained share quickly when the market wanted a natural sugar alternative, but the residual aftertaste limited how broadly it could be deployed. Monk fruit followed a similar pattern of rapid adoption and then scrutiny, with regulatory acceptance varying by country. Sugar alcohols have picked up much of the share that left both, and in some categories cane sugar has quietly returned as the simplest answer when calorie targets allow for it.
What complicates clean label work further is that the term itself is not a single specification. Natural flavors, natural and artificial flavors, and organic flavors each carry distinct regulatory and sourcing requirements, and each constrains what a flavor chemist can pull from when building a system. A natural-only formula limits the available palette of bitter blockers, sweetness enhancers, and aromatic compounds. An organic-certified formula narrows that palette further. Operating across all three categories requires not just the right ingredients but the regulatory fluency to know what each label allows.
“The differences between natural, organic, and artificial flavors all depends on the sources that are being used within those flavors.”
This is where the difficulty becomes a partnership question. Building a clean label formula that genuinely tastes good, holds up at scale, and meets the labeling category a brand has committed to is rarely a single-vendor problem. It requires a flavor partner with depth across labeling categories, technical tools that work within clean label constraints, and the willingness to iterate when the first attempt does not land.
Functional formulation is constrained by realities that show up well before a product reaches a shelf. A few come up consistently enough in apps lab work to be worth understanding upfront.
The work of selecting a flavor partner often gets framed as a sourcing decision, but in functional formulation it functions closer to a long-term technical partnership. The right partner shapes timelines, label outcomes, sensory performance, and the iterative work required to land a product. A few criteria are worth weighing carefully.
The first is whether the company has flavor chemists on staff.
“If not, I would highly recommend moving to one who does. They will be able to provide that expertise, that service to you, of you can give them a product and say, ‘I want it to taste just like this.’ They have that ability, that training, that knowledge to then replicate that flavor.”
For functional beverages, a catalog of standardized flavors rarely meets the mark. A personalized flavor house with in-house chemists does. Replicating a flavor profile, matching a competitor’s product, or building something new all depend on the kind of judgment and experience that comes from having those chemists embedded in the team.
The second is responsiveness in the iterative work. Flavor development rarely lands on the first attempt, and a partner who can move quickly between iterations saves brands real time. At Sensapure, that responsiveness shows up in how client conversations actually run:
“You don’t like that strawberry? That’s fine. We have a variety of other ones. Do you want more fresh? Do you want more candied? Do you want it to be more green? What kind of strawberry are you wanting?”
Sensapure operates with both of those capabilities in place. The flavor library currently spans more than 1,500 existing flavors, supported by an in-house team of chemists who develop custom flavors against specific client briefs.
For brands launching a new functional product, three pieces of advice come up consistently. None of them are surprising on their own, but the brands that get them right early tend to spend less time fixing them later:
The first is to be unique without overcomplicating. New functional brands often try to communicate every claim, ingredient, and benefit on the front of the package, which competes for the same few seconds of attention rather than reinforcing a single clear message.
“People just want something they can look at, understand within a brief look, and then run with it.”
The second is to take a real flavor risk. Seasonal patterns make it clear where consumer attention concentrates. Grapefruit anchors summer. Pumpkin spice anchors fall. Brands that build a new flavor profile rather than chase an existing one have a chance to define a moment in the category instead of riding one already in motion.
“Being able to play around with what products you have, if you’re able to, to create new flavors, will really excite your customer base.”
The third is to validate with sensory panels before scaling. The flavor is almost always the first thing a new consumer notices, and assumptions about what works at the bench do not always survive contact with a broader tasting audience. Sensory feedback early is significantly cheaper than reformulation after launch.
Taken together, the advice points in one direction. A successful functional launch is rarely the product of a single great idea executed in isolation. It is the product of clear positioning, deliberate flavor choices, and honest validation, made in that order and with enough time to act on what each one reveals. Sensapure is built to support that work at each stage.
1 FMCG Gurus, Active Nutrition Report, USA, Q4 2025 (AN59751).
2 FMCG Gurus, Sports Nutrition Report, USA, Q2 2025 (SN70151)
3 FMCG Gurus, Sports Nutrition Report, USA, Q2 2025 (SN66851).
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