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Dr. Max offers free vitamin D tests tied to menopause in Italy, Rituals commits €20M to youth mental health, and GLiTCH hides its protein credentials on purpose.
Dr. Max is turning pharmacy visits into supplement consultations, Rituals is rewriting what a wellness brand owes its consumers, and new vitamin D research could force a reformulation conversation across Europe.
In this episode:
The Health Marketing Daily is a concise briefing for marketers and founders in supplements, functional food and consumer health, hosted by Marco & Klara. New episode every day.
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Also from Marco & Klara: The FMCG Marketing Daily · The Digital Commerce Daily
The daily briefing for professionals in health, nutrition, and wellness marketing. Every episode covers an ingredient of the day, the latest science and regulatory updates from EFSA and beyond, and the brand and market moves shaping the nutraceutical industry. Hosted by Klara and Marco — evidence-based, no hype, no bro-science. Built for formulators, brand managers, regulatory affairs teams, and anyone building in the health and nutrition space.
Marco: Four stories on the agenda today, and it's a packed one.
Klara: We're starting with new research on vitamin D supplement forms — and why the differences actually matter for brands.
Marco: Then Dr. Max pharmacies in Italy with a clever in-store testing activation tied to menopause.
Klara: Rituals dropping twenty million euros on youth mental wellbeing.
Marco: And a candy brand hiding its protein credentials on purpose.
Klara: Let's get into it.
Marco: Scientists are raising a red flag about a widely used form of vitamin D supplement — and it has real implications for how European brands formulate and sell their products.
Marco: Vitamin D is one of the biggest supplement categories across Europe. Walk into any Boots, dm, or Holland & Barrett and you'll see dozens of options. Most consumers assume one vitamin D product is as good as another. That assumption is now being challenged.
Marco: New research suggests that different forms of vitamin D supplementation produce meaningfully different outcomes in the body. One popular form — currently widely used across mass-market products — appears to carry an unexpected downside that scientists hadn't fully accounted for before. The details are still emerging, but the core message is clear: the form of vitamin D matters, not just the dose.
Klara: This doesn't surprise me. There are two main supplemental forms — D2, which is plant-derived, and D3, which is typically animal-derived. Their conversion rates and how long they stay active in the body are genuinely different. What we don't yet know from this research is exactly which form is flagged, and what the specific mechanism of harm is. Without that detail, I'd caution brands against knee-jerk reformulation.
Marco: I take a different view on timing. Brands that move fast to communicate transparency — explaining which form they use and why they chose it — can build real credibility before regulators or media pressure forces the conversation. This is a trust moment.
Klara: That's only credible if the science actually supports your form. Marketing ahead of the evidence is its own kind of risk.
Marco: That's a fair tension to hold. Now let's move to our next story.
Klara: Dr. Max pharmacies in Italy are offering free vitamin D tests in-store, framed specifically around menopause health awareness.
Klara: Dr. Max is one of the largest pharmacy chains in Europe, with a significant footprint across Central and Eastern Europe and now expanding its health services model into Italy. Menopause wellness has become one of the fastest-growing areas of the supplement market across Europe. Women in their forties and fifties are actively seeking more personalised health support — and pharmacies are starting to respond.
Klara: The campaign gives women a free vitamin D test at the counter, tied directly to messaging around menopause. The link makes biological sense. During and after menopause, oestrogen levels fall — and low oestrogen is associated with reduced vitamin D metabolism and accelerated bone density loss. Testing gives the conversation a clinical anchor rather than just a marketing hook.
Klara: From a scientific standpoint, I think this is well-positioned. Vitamin D status is genuinely relevant to menopausal bone health. EFSA has authorised health claims linking vitamin D to normal calcium absorption and the maintenance of normal bones. Using a diagnostic tool to start that conversation is far more credible than simply putting a product on a shelf with vague wellness language.
Marco: Commercially, this is a sharp move. Free testing drives footfall. Footfall creates a one-to-one conversation with a pharmacist. That conversation converts into supplement purchases at a much higher rate than passive browsing. Dr. Max is essentially turning the pharmacy visit into a health consultation — and that's a model other chains across Germany, France, and the Nordics will be watching closely.
Klara: My one concern is follow-through. A test without proper interpretation or dietary guidance is just a number. If the in-store experience stops at the result, the clinical credibility of the whole activation weakens.
Marco: That's the difference between a health service and a sales tactic dressed up as one. Right — let's move to our next story.
Marco: Rituals is putting €20 million behind youth mental health — and it tells us something important about where premium wellness is heading.
Marco: Rituals is a Dutch brand most Europeans know from its bath oils, candles, and mindfulness-adjacent home products. It has built a strong position across European retail — Rituals stores are a fixture on high streets from Amsterdam to Munich. But this move goes well beyond product.
Marco: Through its '10% Profit for Impact' initiative, Rituals will direct €20 million between 2026 and 2028 into specialist programmes focused on mental wellbeing among young people. The money goes toward partnerships and structured interventions — not vague cause marketing. This repositions the brand from a wellness product seller into something closer to a social impact platform.
Marco: Commercially, this is a calculated long-term play. Younger European consumers — the people who will carry premium wellness spending for the next two decades — are increasingly evaluating brands on values, not just ingredients or aesthetics. A €20 million commitment with a named initiative and a concrete timeframe is far harder to dismiss as greenwashing than a logo on a charity poster.
Klara: I'd separate the brand strategy from the substance, though. Mental health programmes vary enormously in their evidence base. Some interventions are well-researched and effective. Others are essentially wellness content dressed up as clinical support. Unless Rituals specifies which organisations it's partnering with and what outcomes it's measuring, it's difficult to assess whether this money produces real results or just good press.
Marco: That's a real risk. But right now, the competitive signal matters regardless. Other brands in the premium wellness space — in beauty, nutrition, and lifestyle — will have to decide whether to match this kind of purpose architecture or risk looking purely transactional by comparison.
Klara: Purpose without accountability is just positioning. The details of those partnerships will be everything.
Marco: Let's move on to our final story for today.
Klara: A new US candy brand called GLiTCH is deliberately burying its protein credentials — and that strategic choice is worth examining carefully.
Klara: Functional snacks have exploded across European retail over the past three years. High-protein bars, fortified gummies, protein cookies — they're everywhere, and they almost all market the same way: big macros on the front of pack, bold health claims, sports imagery. The category has become visually and verbally saturated.
Klara: GLiTCH is doing the opposite. The brand is built on a protein-forward formulation, but its founder has made a deliberate decision not to lead with that in any consumer-facing marketing. The pitch is candy first, function second — or really, function quietly. The thesis is that overt functional messaging is now creating friction rather than conversion, and that consumers who discover a product they genuinely enjoy will seek out its credentials rather than needing them pushed upfront.
Marco: Commercially, I think this is genuinely smart positioning. The functional snack shelf in Europe is a wall of numbers — grams of protein, percentage of RDA, collagen per serving. Most shoppers walk past it unless they're already committed to that lifestyle. A candy that earns its place in the basket on taste, then reveals its credentials, reaches a completely different consumer.
Klara: My concern is the regulatory side. In Europe, if a product carries a nutrition or health claim — even implicitly — it must comply with EC 1924/2006. That means claims must be authorised by EFSA and presented accurately. You cannot hide a functional benefit in the brand story to avoid scrutiny and then use it as a selling point later. The line between clever positioning and misleading omission is narrower than some founders realise.
Marco: That's where execution matters enormously. If GLiTCH keeps the claims off the pack and off the advertising, the strategy is clean. The moment they start using protein as a marketing lever, the rules apply fully. European expansion would require careful legal review before any of this translates to UK or continental shelves.
Klara: The broader lesson here may be the most important one. Functional food brands have spent years assuming that louder benefit communication always wins. GLiTCH is betting the opposite — and if the numbers back that up, it will force a real rethink across sports nutrition and supplement marketing.
Marco: Today's through-line is clear — the brands winning in European wellness are the ones bold enough to lead with something other than the ingredient.
Klara: And whichever form, format, or purpose you lead with, the science underneath still has to hold up.