Mars Symbioscience, the health and life sciences venture of confectionery giant Mars, has launched a new cocoa extract food supplement in the UK and Ireland.
The food supplement product, CocoaVia, has been made available for online purchase on the brand site as well as on Amazon UK starting this month.
Mars Symbioscience marketing and sales director Julie Talbot said: "We are excited to expand our distribution to the UK and Ireland to provide more people with the opportunity to experience the benefits of CocoaVia food supplement.”
Mars Symbioscience has packaged the cocoa extract supplement in the form of capsules with each bottle containing 90 of them.
According to the health and life sciences company, each three-capsule portion of the food supplement provides 375mg of cocoa flavanols.
Mars Symbioscience stated that there has been an increasing liking from consumers in cocoa and the phytonutrients found in it, particularly the cocoa flavanols. It further added that consumers are driven to it owing to the vascular benefits claimed to be provided through the consumption of cocoa flavonols.
While this is the first launch of the CocoaVia cocoa food supplement in the UK and Ireland, the product had an expanded distribution in October last year in the US through the availability at over 7,800 Walgreen stores.
Mars claims to have developed the cocoa flavanols in the supplement using its proprietary Cocoapro process to preserve the naturally found flavanols in cocoa beans.
The process is said to be carried out in Indonesia where cocoa beans are quickly harvested and dried. Following this, the cocoa flavanols are said to be extracted with care from the unroasted cocoa beans.
Mars Symbioscience has added that the CocoaVia food supplement is not derived from chocolate nor does it contain any chocolate.
