Brain-boosting chocolate clusters, bone-building ice-cream and immunity-bolstering gum balls. Such foods may sound as if they are straight from a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Star Trek film set, but they were just some of the new functional foods being showcased at this year’s annual Health Ingredients Exhibition in Frankfurt.

Functional foods are nothing new. When you add an ingredient to a food, for example a cholesterol-lowering substance to a spread, it is no longer simply a spread to flavour your toast. It has an added function — in this case, to lower your cholesterol.

The German exhibition is a chance for ingredients manufacturers to showcase their latest high-tech health-boosting products and it is where members of our food industry decide on what fascinating extras they will be cramming in to the products we will be eating this time next year.

If people such as Dr Christof Kandzia, from BSAF, one of the world’s top-ranking chemical companies, have their way, the common denominator shared by these new ingredients is that they aim to preserve our health, help us to feel good and hit upon consumers’ desire to stay “forever young”.

As Kandzia explains: “According to research conducted by Mintel, more than half of the newly launched food products are enriched with health-ingredient products. The trend for the future is health and wellness.”

So what sort of things are we likely to see making their way on to our supermarket shelves? One especially innovative product already on sale at Boots is a little one-shot drink that comes in what looks like a miniature plastic milk carton of the type served on trains. Slim Thru contains pinolenic acid, a natural extract of pine nuts that has been clinically shown to increase levels of hormones that tell us we are full.

When you slug back a shot with breakfast and lunch, it helps to make you feel full more quickly, so that you eat less, and it also prevents you from feeling hungry between meals, making it less likely that you will snack. The overall result is that your calorie intake goes down, and you shed pounds. It costs £29.95 for 30 single containers, and Lipid Nutrition, the maker of the active ingredient PinnoThin, which had a stand at the show, explained that it will soon be found in yoghurts, salad dressings and other foods.

Anyone who watches their salt intake will be interested in another innovative ingredient known as Maxarome. Based on a yeast extract created by using enzyme technology, it can be consumed to retain the salty flavour of foods, at the same time cutting back the actual salt content. In other words, as Koert Liekelema, of DSM Food Specialists, makers of this product, explains: “It allows you to cut the salt without cutting the taste.”

Purists would say that we should be getting used to fewer salty foods — full stop. But Maxarome seems to me a good place to start for those who can’t resist the taste of salt.

Other functional foods on offer included a milkshake containing green-tea extract, which is said to help to speed up our metabolism and deliver good intakes of heart-protecting flavonoid super-nutrients; and a pasta with added grapeseed extract, another potent antioxidant believed to help to slow damage to the retina in those who have diabetes or raised blood pressure, as well as potentially helping to reduce post-surgery swelling and the risk of heart disease.

Other new ingredients heading your way:

CoroWise

Plant sterol esters. A big winner in the US cholesterol-lowering marketplace, compounds in CoroWise grab excess cholesterol in the gut and remove it from the body. As David Henstrom, of its maker, Carghill, comments: “Look out for yoghurt-type products; breakfast cereals; spicy sauces and rye breads next year.”