Children that are below the third percentile of the mean height for their age and sex qualify medically for growth hormones, according to Jason Zinn president of Nutritional Growth Solutions, Inc., Healthy Height's parent company. However, there is still a real market need for those slightly above that 3% mark who require a nutritional boost to stimulate height growth, he added.
“Our product is for healthy kids that are just shorter in stature, they’re not sick, although it can be used in combination with growth hormones,” Zinn told FoodNavigator-USA.
“The products on the market were specifically trying to get enough calories into children … more meal replacement drinks that don’t specifically address height.”
At 180 calories per serving (compared to 240 calories in PediaSure) Healthy Height is putting a lot effort towards marketing to distinguish itself as a healthy treat or snack that can be added to a child’s regular diet.
“The meal replacements out there are for just that, a meal replacement. We get compared to that often but in reality we’re quite different because of the fact that we’re addressing height,” Zinn said. “I don’t feel like we have any direct competitors.”
Another differentiator with Healthy Height products compared to meal replacements is that while children may put on weight from consuming the shake mix, those extra pounds are associated with linear height growth, therefore their BMI does not change, Zinn pointed out.
Each serving of the shake mix contains 12 grams of whey protein, nine grams of sugar (three grams of added organic cane sugar) vitamins A, C, and D, as well as calcium, iron, and zinc.
Solving for picky eaters
Instead of launching a lineup of novel flavors, Healthy Height said it was focused on getting the taste of its core chocolate and vanilla products up to snuff to appeal to a choosy audience.
“A lot of kids that are short of stature are also picky eaters so we did a lot of work in the flavors we chose, we did a lot of taste testing along the way,” Zinn said.
The choice of adding three grams of organic cane sugar was also a deliberate decision as the company wanted to the product to have a taste profile kids would like but keep the sugar content relatively low to help ease parents' nutritional concerns.
Science-backed nutritional claims
In a prospective, randomized, controlled trial published in the Journal of Pediatrics, 200 healthy, lean, short, prepubertal children (between three and nine years of age) were give Healthy Height nutrition (n =100) or a placebo supplement (n=100) along with their evening meal for 6 months.
At 6 months, the children who consumed at least half of the recommended daily intake of Healthy Height demonstrated “significant increases in height and weight, compared to children consuming the control supplement,” the company said.
Those who consumed the entire recommended amount gained between 0.5-0.9 cm to their height in six months compared to children in the control group.
The Healthy Height group showed positive correlations between the amount of Healthy Height nutrition consumed per body weight and gains in height and weight, whereas no significant correlations were found in the control group.
Additionally, although the Healthy Height group showed significant improvements in both height and weight, there was no increase in body mass index (BMI), “showing that growth was proportional, not obesogenic,” researchers added.
Go-to-market strategy
Healthy Height vanilla and chocolate shake mixes are sold online directly through the company website for $34.96 per 21.7-ounce tub (14 servings). The product will be listed on Amazon this week, according to Zinn.
“We’re going to be expanding into (brick & mortar) retail at some point this year,” he added.
Healthy Height is also heavily focusing on medical marketing to reach a community of pediatricians, nutritionists, and registered dieticians. To support this marketing approach, the company has a team of on-staff nutritionists who will regularly provide content and guidance to millennial parents looking for a nutritional supplement for their kids’ diets.
“We don’t want to be just a product. We want to be a support source for families for everything related to food and nutrition and growth,” Zinn said. “Our mission as a company is to offer scientifically studied products.”