Speaking to NutraIngredients at the Sports & Active Nutrition Summit, DiLorenzo noted that the shift has been building for years but has now reached a tipping point.
“Even your most hardcore athlete, who really is all about efficacy… even now has pretty high standards for what a product should taste like,” he said.
Historically, a segment of performance-driven consumers has been willing to tolerate bitterness and other challenging sensory characteristics in exchange for functional benefits. But as flavor technologies have improved and as sports nutrition has expanded beyond its traditional core audience, that tolerance has narrowed.
For brands seeking broader, mass-market growth, he suggested poor sensory performance now presents a structural limitation.
“If you really want to scale the mass market, it’s very difficult to do that with functionals that impart any kind of adverse sensory characteristic,” he said.
The shift carries consequences for how products are brought to market. At Nutrabolt, formulators build sensory considerations into the early stages of ingredient assessment, rather than attempting to correct flavour challenges at the end of development.
“We’re understanding it before we’re even putting the formulas together,” he explained, noting that the company may conduct sensory evaluations on ingredients even without an immediate application, in order to steer future pipeline decisions.
The approach is meant to avoid a common development misstep: advancing technically robust formulas that are difficult to commercialize due to taste.
“If your functionals aren’t good, you definitely reconsider what that product formula might look like,” he said.
DiLorenzo also pointed to the risk of over-iterating in pursuit of an ideal efficacy profile, particularly when working with novel or leading-edge ingredients. In some cases, he suggested, formulators may be trying to solve sensory challenges that existing technologies are not equipped to fix.
“Sometimes you’re just too early,” he said.
While flavor remains subjective, DiLorenzo added that consumer data consistently show dominant preferences within product categories. Ignoring those patterns in favor of novelty, he warned, can limit repeat-purchase potential.
The larger takeaway for business stakeholders is that sensory performance is becoming a commercial gatekeeper in sports nutrition. As the category matures and competition increases, products that fail to satisfy modern taste expectations risk being sidelined, regardless of their functional credentials.
The full interview is available to watch above.
