Ingredient developer NNB Nutrition used SupplySide Global 2026 — held October 28–30 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas — to roll out five platform-level innovations squarely aimed at the booming functional food and beverage market. The launches spanned natural sweetener technology, dipeptide-based performance ingredients, ultra-pure creatine, and fermented actives for longevity and cognition.
Sweeteners and Dipeptides
The headline debut was SweetVantage®, a fermented steviol glycoside blend built around NNB's patented stevia Reb M9, the product of three years and $2.5 million in research. The blend targets the front, middle, and back of the palate to replicate a sugar-like sweetness profile with lower astringency than other natural sweeteners and a lower cost than conventional stevia Reb M — labelable simply as "Steviol Glycosides." An enhanced version, SweetVantage®+, adds brazzein, a fermented sweet protein, in a patent-pending combination designed for bitterness masking in hard-to-flavor applications such as EAAs, protein powders, greens blends, and herbal extracts — categories that have historically leaned on sucralose or synthetic bitter blockers.
On the performance side, NNB introduced VasoRush™, a 2:1 di-citrulline and di-arginine peptide complex designed to support nitric oxide delivery through the cGMP signaling pathway. In NNB's pre-clinical testing at a human-equivalent dose of 2.7 g per day, VasoRush™ increased plasma cGMP by 85%, kept nitric oxide elevated for up to six hours, and improved running time to exhaustion by 15.9% versus exercise control — results the company says outperformed higher 8 g doses of citrulline, citrulline malate, and arginine. The dipeptides are naturally occurring, and a European legal assessment concluded they should not be classified as novel foods. DL 185® (dileucine), NNB's existing dipeptide for muscle protein synthesis, was also featured; published human research indicates 2 g of DL 185® delivered 86% more leucine to muscles within 30 minutes and a 60% greater increase in muscle protein synthesis compared with an equivalent leucine dose.
Purity and Fermentation
Pürest Creatine™, produced through a proprietary synthesis route that avoids reaction pathways generating hazardous byproducts, was positioned as the highest-purity creatine on the market, with less than 1.0 ppm of each heavy metal and third-party verification through Eurofins for DCD and DHT levels. The ingredient recently received the Greater Bay Area Selected Healthy Ingredients Gold Award at Hi & Fi Asia-China, and NNB prices it at roughly half the cost of comparable high-purity creatines — a potential differentiator for supplement brands under margin pressure.
Two fermented actives rounded out the lineup. MitoPrime® is a pure L-ergothioneine produced via patented fermentation; a 20 mg human dose produced a 2.3-fold increase in plasma ergothioneine and improvements in subjective sleep quality in published research. SalidroPure™ is a fermented, non-GMO salidroside positioned as a sustainable alternative to Rhodiola rosea extract, now subject to international trade restrictions under CITES. A 20–30 mg dose provides the salidroside equivalent of roughly 2,000 mg of Rhodiola, in a small enough format for gummies, capsules, and dissolving strips.
Operator Implications
"More brands are moving into the functional food space and creating what we call ready-to-consume supplementation: drinks, snacks, gummies and more. They're looking not only for clean ingredients, but for low-dose, high-potency ingredients as well," said Dustin Elliott, Chief Brand Officer of NNB Nutrition USA. The company brought that vision to life with OnSwitch, a concept ready-to-drink beverage combining MitoPrime® and SalidroPure™ with other fermentation-derived actives to demonstrate how these ingredients can transition from capsules and powders into functional beverage formats.
For operators and formulators tracking the intersection of ingredient innovation and restaurant-adjacent nutrition, NNB's SupplySide showing reflects a broader industry push toward cleaner-label, lower-dose functional ingredients that can carry equivalent or superior efficacy claims — a trend reshaping everything from sports nutrition to functional snacks and RTD beverages.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
